I feel like my honesty gives people the freedom to talk about things they wouldn't otherwise.

I'm an assistant storyteller. It's like being a waiter or a gas-station attendant, but I'm waiting on six million people a week, if I'm lucky.

Seek women mentors. If you're a businesswoman, look at the TEDx conferences. There's a lot of businesswomen that speak on there. I find them extremely inspiring.

I've been accused of being too flexible, too willing to mold myself to men, and that's something I'm constantly working on.

I have people in my life who will say, 'Honey, you're trying too hard.' I like being saucy, but I'm 73 and a half. I'm still trying to find my way between matronly and coltishness.

As I started getting older, I realized, 'I'm so happy!' I didn't expect this! I wasn't happy when I was young.

Through therapy and a lot of thinking and writing my memoirs, I've been able to use my life as a lesson.

When you can't remember why you're hurt, that's when you're healed.

I feel like when I was an adolescent, and felt so unworthy of love and so empty, I moved outside of myself.

I don't think there's anything more important than making peace before it's too late. And it almost always falls to the child to try to move toward the parent.

The most important thing to do as you age is to stay physically active. Lots of people just throw in the towel if they can't do what they used to do, and that's terrible.

I was a chameleon, the woman men wanted me to be.

I find that arduous physical labor can jump-start my thought process.

Our youth deserve the opportunity to complete their high school and college education, free of early parenthood. Their future children deserve the opportunity to grow up in financially and emotionally stable homes. Our communities benefit from healthy, productive, well-prepared young people.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

I'm now the elder in the position of doling out wisdom and trying to mend fences.

The '60s may be idealized in the movie from a cultural point of view, but the decade was all about discord and a big generational split that was very painful.

I'm not sure that I would have become a Christian if I had continued to live in Hollywood because the notion wouldn't have occurred to me.

I lived in France during the '60s. I was there from the early '60s until 1970, so my view of the '60s is more global. It was a time of tremendous transition, not only for America but for the whole world.

I was raised in the '50s. I was taught by my father that how I looked was all that mattered, frankly.

I was always a courageous woman, capable of confronting governments but not men.

I remember saying goodbye to my father the night he left to join the Navy. He didn't have to. He was older than other servicemen and had a family to support but he wanted to be a part of the fight against fascism, not just make movies about it. I admired this about him.

The reality is sobering: in the United States one in three girls will become pregnant before age 20, totaling more than 750,000 girls per year.

I love mistakes because it's the only way you learn.

If you're ever in a situation where you're not getting served or you can't get what you need, just cry.

My love life is wonderful.

I don't want to make a cheap analysis, but when you have, like I did, a father incapable of showing emotion, who spends his life telling you that no one will love you if you aren't perfect, it leaves scars.

I would have given up acting in a minute. I didn't like how it set me apart from other people.

A mother who is obsessing about being thin and dieting and exercising is not going to be a very good mother.

I was in my mid-40s. I was a bulimic, and I realized if I continue with this addiction of mine, I will not be able to continue doing my life. The older you get the more damage it does; it takes longer to recover from a binge. And it was very hard.

It's hard for women at my age in Hollywood, but I'm not discouraged.

In my marriages, I'd lost parts of who I was because I was trying to mold myself into what I thought a man wanted me to be.

I knew that I had to write my memoirs.

I grew up with a deep belief that wherever our troops fought, they were on the side of the angels.

What we view in the media - and who presents it to us - does so much to determine how we think, how we feel about ourselves, and how we view the world.

Our young people are assets to be cultivated and nurtured; let's begin treating them that way.

We are living on average today 34 years longer than our great-grandparents did.

I think feminism is about the spirit.

I am blessed beyond reason with women friends.

I love films that make you feel good when you come out and, in my opinion, there's not enough of them these days.

Real love and intimacy can be much more possible when you're older.

I think friendship is more important than love, but that love that grows out of friendship is the very best of all.

Writing is a muscle that needs to be exercised every day: The more you write, the easier it becomes.

Just as there are moments when the words flow and it feels like the easiest job in the world, there are many more when I think I have nothing to say, and my journalism training taught me that writing is a job, that you write whether you are inspired or not, and that the only way to unlock creativity is to write through it.

I believe it is the flaws that make us interesting, our backgrounds, the hardships.

In my small, coastal New England town, an hour outside New York, I know many people who have dealt with cancer. I can reel off the names of at least 15 women I know, all in their 40s.

I have a deep and passionate love of America. It is where I have always thought I would be happiest, and although I miss England desperately, I find that my heart definitely has its home over here.

I have learned that it is imperative that I make time for my friends, that they demand to be as much a part of the mix as my family and my work, and perhaps more so, because they are not an inevitability.

I am often asked what I would be doing if I hadn't become a writer. I have long said I would probably be a chef or a garden designer or a decorator, but since recording my own books, there is no doubt in my mind that if the writing doesn't work out, voice work is what I would choose.

I show the people I love that I love them by gathering them in my kitchen and feeding them, so no surprise that most of my characters do the same thing.