"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are"

"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not."

"In South Africa one in four women have AIDS. When you are there it is shocking. So many people are dying from the disease and the same number are getting the disease each year. My main goal was to learn and call attention to some of the things that were happening."

"We do things tastefully but we do a lot. My mom has a lot of traditional Christmas things she likes us to do together. We get fresh greens and make garlands for the house. She has a list of things to do, we bake cookies together and deliver them around the neighborhood. My mother likes to make gifts for everyone we know, including all my friends. She remembers everyone."

"The whole subject with weight pressure worries me because a lot of young actresses are really unhealthy. It didn't happen to me when I was younger because I grew up in South Carolina in a very safe and secure environment."

"I do feel that film and TV are often behind when it comes to the way women look, they often dress them in khakis and denim shirts, but women and mothers these days look great and films need to reflect that. Real people look very fashionable, moms are at the forefront of the style. But things are getting better in that way."

"I just want to work and be in films that I like, it is so simple. I think from the outside it seems as though as actors, we are picking and choosing our roles, but it isn't like that at all, perhaps unless you are George Clooney. There are not that many movies I would want to be in."

"I am not really interested in the comic book movies for example. They send me very violent scripts that don't interest me. One I was sent involved me playing a woman, a mother and wife who gets killed, shot in the stomach. It was a thriller and it did not excite me at all. So I turned it down."

"My golden retriever, Callie, is so easy to please. She finds great pleasure in our day-to-day routine, which helps me to enjoy the simple things. She loves to jump on the couch with her favorite toys and roll around while I clap my hands."

"I started doing yoga in my 20s. I did teacher training, that was what I was going to do if acting didn't work out. I started teaching other actors right at the beginning of the yoga craze - people still thought it was a little weird, but a lot of actors I knew were getting into it and didn't want to look foolish in class. So I started teaching them!"

"I enjoy Pilates and I do yoga at home where I get peace and quiet. I think it helps that I don't drink and I never smoked. You see so many young girls smoking and you want to say to them 'it's bad for your skin and health, everything'."

"When we think about millions of hungry children, we don't think about America. We relate the problem to other nations, like Ethiopia, India or Somalia. The sad truth is that one is five American kids is at risk due to poor nutrition."

"I'm not really much of a shopper. I have to say that I'd definitely prefer good sex. What makes good sex? Oh my god. I think you need to feel free and you have to really trust the other person. And you have to have that strange, mysterious chemical connection."

"Alcoholism is a genetically predisposed disease and it does run in my family. I also think I felt like a misfit. I was in the South, everybody was blonde. I just didn't feel like I fitted in. It was sort of my way of fitting."

"This is going to sound strange, but I really didn't think I would pass 30. I don't know why or whatever, I just didn't. That's a very weird thing to say, I'm sorry. I don't know. Maybe it's because I was drinking so much as a youth."

"I have a very strong distinction between work and my life. They are not the same and I don't want to ever feel that on a day to day basis that I have to live up to people's expectations, because you never can do that so I don't want to put that pressure on myself."

"I just loved being in the theatre with all those crazy, creative people."

"I think I can speak for all four of us on the show here. We all consider ourselves to be feminists and we get very upset when people don't think we are. We're like, where did this come from? Of course we are."

"The older I get, the less conservative I become."

"I've tried to be more self-sufficient as I've gotten older. I'd like to not worry about whether they're going to sell my next album or book. Hell, William Blake wasn't even published in his lifetime."

"I've come to appreciate how special a song is compared to other art forms, because you can carry it around in your head and your heart, and it remains part of you. It just comes as natural as a bird to me, always did. It's the way singer-songwriters make sense of our lives."

"Dylan's relationship with Johnny Cash was the biggest influence on Nashville in my lifetime - they opened up country music."

"I ended up being friends with all my heroes. Lefty Frizzell, George Jones, Johnny Cash - it was incredible."

"Songs are just like your kids. You love them all, and they're all different. I can't really pick out favourites."