I'm so vain, all I could think was I should have stopped at 'American Pie.'

I can't get the serious roles. People don't see me that way.

It's really hard for me to meet someone. I don't want to date actors. Been there, done that. Only one actor per household, please.

I was thinking, 'If I go bald, I might do something like Bret Michaels and have it all attached to a handkerchief.'

Our secret desire as women is to have a guy who falls madly in love with us even though we're incredibly opinionated or we're not the sort of normal, polite, poised woman.

When you're on this major English estate, breathing in the English air, and it's untouched, you can feel its presence. It's a whole different feel. It really felt like we were there living it. It didn't feel modern, ever.

I always feel in movies, I don't know if it's because I'm jaded, but I always feel like we don't go far enough.

I always get excited when I find out there's a sequel, because all the work is kind of done.

I do shows, stage shows all the time, and I'm so afraid that people are going to recognize themselves, and they never do. They never do. They're always like, 'Oh, that woman was ridiculous,' and yeah, they're talking about themselves.

Cate Blanchett and others, they get this broad range of all these cool people they can play. Some women really do get it all. For me, it is the same thing that happens over and over. I should change that and maybe write my own thing.

Werner Herzog, when I auditioned for 'Bad Lieutenant,' he had never seen any of my films. He thought I was this actress living in New Orleans and it was my first job.

I do have to say, there is this incredible benefit to being older. I never thought I'd say that. I've figured out that show business isn't the end-all. I thought I'd never be tired of Hollywood, of the experience, and I have to say there's some relief. As you get older, your taste changes.

I'm not a prude.

I'm so lucky I got a career in my 30s because these young girls aren't allowed to have their 20s. It's all being documented.

I kind of waited for opportunities to be handed to me. I think I was lazy, and when things didn't go right, I just said, 'Oh well.'

You get the older version of women that you've played before.

When people slave over those scripts and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for them, they don't usually want you to add farts.

I think I get credit for my timing because most of the time, I really have no idea where I'm going with it.

Hugh Grant has that magic in real life, so when he's saying these lines, 'It's always been you,' it's just devastating.

If things don't work out with one person, there's many other people to replace you with online.

I love that topic, the whole relationship thing, and I think that's why I love all this stuff, the Jane Austen stuff.

I don't think men really fall in love with the outspoken girl.

I don't think my career would be as good if I were a serious actress. Comedy is less age-conscious.

I wasn't allowed to watch regular television when I was growing up, only PBS, so I watched 'Masterpiece Theatre' and a lot of Jane Austen. I loved stories where the girl is attracted to a man and it looks like it's not going to work out.

Comparison is painful. Don't be cowed by other people's pretty pictures. When you feel unimpressive, or irrelevant, that has nothing to do with what you're actually capable of.

When I pick up a book that's, you know, wreathed in laurels, I expect a lot, and that doesn't give the book its best chance to shine.

I think the big lesson I've learned is that it's very hard to write satire in America because almost immediately, whatever you've thought of turns out to come true, or sometimes it already was true.

I haven't had trouble with writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, cliched writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn't have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments.

The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.

I felt more doubtful than usual with 'Goon Squad,' because I knew that the book's genre wasn't easily named - Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? - and I worried that its lack of a clear category would count against it. My hopes for it were pretty modest.

If you don't have people that the reader cares about and stories that are gripping, you've got nothing.

It's not that I sit down and write great stuff without thinking, not at all. Most of it is terrible. But the stuff that feels fun and fresh to me tends to happen fairly unthinkingly.

I think a playful critique is good for all of us, and that's basically how I see satire functioning. But I'm not interested in a kind of contemptuous satirical vision; I try always, even when I'm knowingly being satirical, to also be humane, but I mean, let's face it: there's plenty in American life to make fun of, and we all participate in it.

I have a hatred of familiarity. If I feel like I am doing something I've done before, it feels old and done. I feel I have no choice but to strike out in directions that feel new - anything less just doesn't seem worth it.

I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and the music scene that we were part of. So, in a certain way, music cuts through time like almost nothing else. You know, it makes us feel like we're back in an earlier moment.

Remaining a pop phenomenon for 20 years without dying or lapsing into self-parody is quite a feat.

My first attempt at writing a novel was horrible. I had to throw it away. But I stuck with the idea, which is what became 'The Invisible Circus.'

I grew up in the '70s, when people talked on the phone - and just talked more. I remember the phone was the epicenter of our house. I spent hours every evening as a teenager waiting for the phone to ring and talking to my friends.

I grew up in the 1970s, and my friends and I felt very keenly that we had missed the '60s. We were bummed out about it.

I'm embarrassed to say this, but I shy away from memoirs. My feeling is always that I'm saving them for later, so I guess that means I'll reach a point when I read nothing else.

I spend so long writing each of my novels that by the time I'm done with one, I'm ready to discover a totally different world.

If you read novels of the 19th century, they're pretty experimental. They take lots of chances; they seem to break a lot of rules. You've got omniscient narrators lecturing at times to the reader in first person. If you go back to the earliest novels, this is happening to a wild extent, like 'Tristram Shandy' or 'Don Quixote'.

I wasn't a kid who wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a doctor. I was kind of morbid. I was really into the body and how it could go wrong. I wanted to dig up bodies from the graveyard.

Criticism is fine and conversation is fine, but the person who's criticizing should know what they're saying and whom they're criticizing.

I love the thriller genre generally. I like murder mysteries and those kinds of adventure stories.

If you can write any way and it's working out, just bow down in gratitude.

I listened to classic rock and roll, and punk rock. 'Goon Squad' provides a pretty accurate playlist of my teenage years, though it leaves out 'The Who,' which was my absolute favorite band.

I blurb a lot of books by women, and I'm eager to provide encouragement and support for young women.

I learned you have to move fast, writing futuristic satire in America: Before you know it, you're a realist!

Technology makes everyone feel old. A laptop is old after two years. Someone always has something newer. Everyone seems to feel obsolete now, even the young.