Claire Danes

“I think I would make a lousy stay-at-home mom. It just wouldn't suit me.”

“Most people assume that autistic people are not capable of empathy.”

“Yeah, there was the Flora Plum thing, where I trained for about a month and I had taken a semester off for that, and two weeks prior to filming, the financing collapsed.”

“I still have a book club with my friends from when I was 5. That's the privilege of growing up in a place where people want to remain. It's a huge gift.”

“People in the CIA, they marry each other. They're like actors! We have to travel without much warning to far-flung places, and it's very hard to communicate what our experiences are like to those in the outside world.”

“My character was kidnapped by the Terminator and I was kidnapped by the Terminator production.”

“I really have never been concerned about being beautiful on-screen. That's just not my jam.”

“I think it's important to never play 'crazy' - you have to know what kind of crazy you're playing.”

“I have plenty of vanity in my life. I want to look pretty in the world. But it can be this bottomless pit.”

“You have to pick your battles on set.”

“Relationships are a constant negotiation and balance.”

“I'm very vain about my performance. I want to give as honest a performance as I can. But I'm not so worried about being regarded as beautiful when I'm playing a character.”

“The twenties are a deceptively challenging-slash-painful time. I'm just glad to be out of that phase.”

“It's OK to want to look and feel your best. It's OK to work at being attractive, whatever that means to you. And it's also OK to not expect to be defined by that. It's OK to be powerful in every way: to be big, to take up space. To breathe and thrive.”

“I exercise more for mental relaxation than anything else.”

“I've always very earnestly tried to do my best, so I just have to trust that and forgive myself for being fallible.”

“Any story is better with a little love in it, right?”

“I was a very confident child. I knew I wanted to be an actress from the age of 5.”

“I don't know any celebrated people that register in a big way who aren't unique.”

“I guess I stopped acting when I was 18 and didn't pick it up again until I was 21. That wasn't the plan, though. When I first started at Yale, the plan was to do a movie each summer.”