The only power you have is the word no.

I'm not a depressive, but I certainly have mood swings. It's an occupational hazard, I would say, and I'm glad I'm in the occupation I'm in.

My name is Frances Louise McDormand, formerly known as Cynthia Ann Smith. I was born in Gibson City, Ill., in 1957. I identify as gender-normative, heterosexual, and white-trash American. My parents were not white trash. My birth mother was white trash.

I was often told that I wasn't a thing. 'She's not pretty enough. She's not tall enough. She's not thin enough. She's not fat enough.' I thought, 'O.K., someday you're going to be looking for someone not, not, not, not, and there I'll be.'

I think that there's a clinical mental illness called depression, but I believe that post-industrial America has been narcotized by progress. There's a cultural malaise - mental illness or no - that everybody suffers from at some point in their life.

That's another great thing about getting older. Your life is written on your face.

I'm not an actor because I want my picture taken. I'm an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange.

A 90-minute time frame is not long enough to tell a good female story, and that's why long-format television has become so great for female storytelling and for female performers and directors and writers.

I wasn't into sports, but I was really into Shakespeare.

A movie set actually can be a good place to have a family atmosphere.

With aging, you earn the right to be loyal to yourself.

I am an ordinary person.

We appreciate quiet living. It's not exactly a Hollywood way of life - I couldn't stand living out in Hollywood because you can never escape from the business. All people ever do is talk about movies. At least in New York you can have some other life.

Cinematic icons of the police detective are more male role models than female.

When you lose a spouse, you're a widow or widower; when you lose your parents, you're an orphan. When you lose a child, there's no word in the English language for that position, that place that you're left.

I was too old, too young, too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, too blond, too dark - but at some point, they're going to need the other. So I'd get really good at being the other.

I've made a professional reputation playing working-class, middle-class, American women. There's a real sense of stoicism and pragmatism and strength and lyricism of a woman like that.

Getting older and adjusting to all the things that biologically happen to you is not easy to do and is a constant struggle and adjustment.

I think awards are good for the movie. They can bring a new audience to the movie. I've always claimed that things like that don't get you work. Work gets you work. That's my blue-collar, protestant work ethic.

Most women's pictures are as boring and as formulaic as men's pictures. In place of a car chase or a battle scene, what you get is an extreme closeup of a woman breaking down.

I have friends who are movie stars, and I think it's just as hard a job as being a working actor. But it's a different job, and it's not the one I want.

It's kind of a subversive act to tell a story of a woman past a certain age, to develop a four-hour movie based on a marriage and a story of two people past middle age.

The fact that I'm sleeping with the director may have something to do with it.

I like hard rock, and classic rock, and even metal.

I don't think you can ever completely transform yourself on film, but if you do your job well, you can make people believe that you're the character you're trying to be.

My position has always been that the way people age and the signs that we show of aging is nature's way of tattooing. It's natural scarification, and the life you lead gives you the symbols and the emblems of your life, the road map you followed.

I'm a character actress, plain and simple... Who can worry about a career? Have a life. Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.

In my theater work, I've had much more three-dimensional, broader-stroke characters.

I never trusted good-looking boys.

I don't think of myself as a movie star and I can pretty easily convince other people that I'm not a movie star.

I haven't wanted to play a mother for a long time because I am one.

It's much easier to play supporting roles because that's what I do in my life: I support my son.

Certainly, a lot of the films I've worked on have ended up good movies, but they haven't always been the best experiences.

Movie stars have careers - actors work, and then they don't work, and then they work again.

It's a scary thing going into the workforce with a $50,000 debt and you've been trained as a classical theatre actor. There's always a depression in the theatre.

There's only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power.

Because of my own insecurities about the way I look, I do sometimes sabotage the looks of my characters by making them as homely as possible. I've never done a glamour part. I'd like to some day, though I don't know if I could pull it off.

I'm trained in the theater, and acting, for me, is about the imaginative life I create for myself, not about basing it on something real. I think that whatever I create becomes the reality for the audience.

I went to my school careers counselors and said I wanted to be an actor, and they didn't know what to do. They showed me catalogues with pretty campuses and said, 'Oh, look, there's a theater building. Why don't you go there?'

I was completely naive about the business of being an actor. My family didn't go to the theater or to the movies. We watched television like every 1960s small-town American family, and I certainly never thought about being on TV. I thought I was going to be a classical actor in the grand tradition.

I became interested in educating people in the variety of ways in which women can express their emotion. Which is much easier to do in a large role than in a supporting role to a male protagonist. In general, the women in a supporting role to a male protagonist - cry a lot.

I'm not really that interested in going back to playing small supporting roles.

The crew on 'Three Bilboards,' by the way, is one of the best I've ever worked with. And that's not hyperbole.

I swear a lot; I always have. So does my husband. Our son, surprisingly, does not swear much at all.

I'm from working-class, blue-collar America, and I don't believe that people in that socioeconomic strata wait until they're 40 to have children.

Something happened culturally: No one is supposed to age past 45 - sartorially, cosmetically, attitudinally.

Everybody dresses like a teenager. Everybody dyes their hair. Everybody is concerned about a smooth face.

We are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species. There's no desire to be an adult.

Adulthood is not a goal. It's not seen as a gift.

I want to be revered. I want to be an elder; I want to be an elderess.