I love books.
Well I had my kids so young that I kind of feel that I’m a kid too and am growing up with them. The things they’re interested in tend to really influence me.
It’s fun to do a comedy and hook people in and then hoodwink them into watching a serious movie. I like to lead in with the comedy and then hit them over the head with a drama.
I grew up in Tennessee. We didn’t know what Louis Vuitton was. I had to order all my prom outfits out of catalogs.
[on the movie business] The battles that we face in this business aren’t financial, but they are moral. And I certainly think that the longer you can keep your values, and your morality intact, and keep your head on your shoulders about what is important at the end of the day, you can get the most out of this business and really emerge with something wonderful.
People want to try and move you into a place where you can be easily identifiable by every woman in America – to be this very likable woman in a romantic comedy. And it’s really hard for me. I just don’t see myself as the girl that everybody likes. I never have been and I don’t know how to be that person.
[on “Pleasantville”] We were thrilled for just the three nominations we got, but obviously it’s a little sad. I went through so many press junkets with people saying they loved it. And Joan Allen was robbed but she can’t get nominated every year. She’s an inspiration for every young actress. She has that calm and reserve about herself and makes you think she appreciates the normal things of everyday. Then she transforms into this character that’s so different.
Never judge a book by its movie.
An autobiography is not about pictures; it’s about the stories; it’s about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people’s privacy.
What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.
To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution – such call I good books.
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it. – Vronksy (Anna Karenina)
I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.
Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.
The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.
Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public.
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
