Mary-Louise Parker

“I'm not comfortable with getting a job by being at the right Hollywood party; I'm not a terribly sociable creature.”

“I just want to make lunches and organize my kids' playroom.”

“My favorite scene in all of movies is Gregory Peck in 'To Kill A Mockingbird': You see him where he's on the porch, and his face is almost completely obscured. I don't want to see his face.”

“My sister's fish tacos are out of control. I'd give her a restaurant if I were a gazillionaire.”

“I don't really ever think about whether or not I like the characters I'm playing. I'm more into the minutiae of their behaviour or what they're doing in a certain scene.”

“It's good to feel stupid sometimes and do things that are out of your comfort zone.”

“The theater is who I am - it's where I feel the most inspired, the most at home, the most useful.”

“People have a problem with me being different, but that propels me forward in life.”

“I have to say, I haven't really worked with that many people in my career that I haven't liked, which I think is really rare.”

“Thank you, NASA, for keeping watch and realizing that our universe will never be anything but light-years new. I want to understand that, and I am so comforted by the fact that I can't. It only proves that some things won't allow themselves to be understood. They aren't for us to know and there's rapture in that, don't you think? Are you happy there, with your eyes glued to the heavens? You know so much, like why the ocean doesn't fall out of the sky, and that there is no upside down. There is no up.”

“I like A&E. I like those corny intimate-portrait things. They're so kind of ingenious and artificial and soothing.”

“I don't live in Los Angeles and I don't do a lot of superfluous press.”

“Words are really powerful. I don't believe that axiom at all - words can absolutely hurt you. Words can wound. They can do a lot of damage. I think they can do way more damage than sticks and stones. I'll take sticks and stones.”

“My way to combat anything is just to walk straight into it with my fists up.”

“Look, I don't care if anyone likes me when it comes to my work. But I can be massively insecure in other parts of my life.”

“In college, my teachers were usually after me for going after comedy too much, leaning too much in that direction.”

“My mother is a beauty.”

“Mediocrity is underrated.”

“My parents have been together for 65 years. They're both really stubborn. They're not quitters.”

“I certainly was never the pretty girl at school, but I can go to a lot of different places with this face.”