I study Carl Jung, who talks a lot about the shadow side, the repressed side. I think the scariest thing in the world is repression. There's plenty to be idealistic about, but we have to be aware of all sides of ourselves, and there are definitely shadows in all of us.

You're not directing an actor toward a thing they can't achieve. Because direction is elusive. When directors hold respect for the various craftsmen and -women who are telling the story, it's the greatest result. I think people do their bravest work when given an elusive canvas.

In Smooth Talk it was a much more intuitive search - I was only 17 at the time, and I wasn't aware, as women are when they get a little older, that there's always a side of a woman that likes a man from the other side of the tracks. We all have an attraction to what's different from us.

Obviously, the urge to molest children comes from some experience the person has had as a child, and he or she never worked it out. Watching Raymond Buckey describe how he loved working with the kids, I could sense this 11-year-old who'd stopped and never grown further on a sexual level.

I had a good understating about press: that it's the actor's responsibility to publicize his or her films, that the press can be fun, that it's not about hyping yourself into stardom or trying to sell yourself as a hot ticket. I think a lot of young actors now are getting caught up in that.

Nick Сage and I can't make love in movie? That's scary. And our hero? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Using a body as a shield against bullets? Hey - the world's a big place, and people get away with what they get away with, but to attack David Lynch for doing things I've seen in many movies, that's weird.

I love comedy. David's Lynch the only person I've worked with more than once who sees me as a specific thing - he sees me as the sexy bimbo, in ways, and he also sees me as Lucille Ball. Actually, Nick Cage and I did Lucy and Ricky in two scenes in Wild at heart that were cut because the movie was four hours long.

Private boarding schools and Catholic schools on the East Coast are something. Choate really ruined my father's life. He's had nightmares about Choate every since he went there. Treat Williams, who's a good friend, went to Kent School, in Connecticut. The stories I've heard about those places - didn't you have one nun who was just the worst nightmare?

Unfortunately, overall, movies are a conglomerate. People buy and sell people in this business, which can get really ugly unless you have the right set of values and understand why you're doing it. Luckily, I was raised by people who'd already gotten to that point, and seen all the yuck stuff - which is probably why they originally didn't want me to act.

Virginia Mayo had kind of a small role in The Best Years of Our Lives, but you got the whole character in one scene. Where are those parts? I was talking to somebody about great actors: Morgan Freeman's name came up, Forest Whitaker, Denzel Washington. And I realized, there're no black actresses. Where's there a black actress who's been extremely successful in the past 10 years?

I made a commitment to myself: that I wanted to be an actress, and I wanted to do films that make a difference. Whether it makes someone laugh, or it has a moral to the story - it doesn't have to be an ethical film, but it has to move people. If it doesn't excite me, it's not worth doing - it's better to work on myself and my own life and wait until another great thing comes along.

Even if you've gone through an average childhood, you have girlfriends who get pregnant and then have to choose whether or not to have a child. And this stuff certainly makes you think about what you're taking on. I certainly want to have children, but I could never do it until I felt I loved myself enough, and wanted to bring someone into the world because I had some kind of security.

People are more willing to talk about child abuse. When this whole McMartin thing went down, I was at a dinner party with about eight people, all from different backgrounds and from all over the world. And every single person at that table had had some weird experience as a child. I think everyone has - whether it was with a babysitter, or playing doctor, but usually when some older person tries to come in contact with you. It's amazing how much we block out.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.

The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.

I am my world.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.

Only describe, don't explain.

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.

The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.

How small a thought it takes to fill a life.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.

I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.

To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

What can be shown, cannot be said.

The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy.

What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.

At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.

Ethics and aesthetics are one.

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.

When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote

An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it.

Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult 'What is that?

Don't think, but look! (PI 66)

Language disguises thought.

If in life we are surrounded by death, then in the health of our intellect we are surrounded by madness.

If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.

Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound.

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.