Sissy Spacek

“There's a real danger in trying to stay king of the mountain. You stop taking risks, you stop being as creative, because you're trying to maintain a position. Apart from anything else that really takes the fun out of it.”

“Nature is my church. The wind in the trees and the bugs and the frogs. All those things are comfort to me.”

“There are fewer roles, and I've done so many things already that I don't want to repeat, so to find something you haven't done is harder. I don't want to play a country singer again.”

“I need to fill myself up with real life. That's kind of the well I draw from.”

“I had a dozen years to act before starting a family, then found that motherhood dwarfed everything else. Once or twice a year, I take a project that appeals to me for its redeeming social value.”

“I didn't worry about leaving the fast lane - I was just so consumed with my baby that it seemed like the right thing to do. I never felt like I left New York, though. If you've lived in a place and loved it, you never feel like you left it.”

“My parents were devoted. Civic minded. We had family counsels. Three of us children against two of them. We lived a 'Leave It to Beaver' time.”

“Oftentimes you read scripts, and you get to one and you think, 'OK, is this good, or is this just better than all the other ones that I have been reading?'”

“Our life is our life. If we waste it, we're fools.”

“You get angry and frustrated wondering, 'Are there enough parts for women?'”

“I connect with just plain old everyday people. Human behavior fascinates me, the people who are the nuts and bolts of this country who help hold up the world.”

“I follow the roles.”

“For me, life is a bowl of cherries.”

“I like horseback riding. I like to hike. I play guitar and sing.”

“With my coloring, I'm nothing in black and white. I've seen my films sometimes on black-and-white TV. Disaster.”

“I've always been a people-watcher, and as an actor, later, I just mined all those little details.”

“I had no fear 'cause it seemed everyone in the audience always applauded whatever I did. Course, maybe it was because I always seemed to know everyone in the audience.”

“My daughter is far more talented than me in the songwriting department - far more.”

“I love a lot of the '70s musicians, like Bonnie Raitt. And I love Sheryl Crow. But probably my favorite musician is a woman by the name of Schuyler Fisk.”

“I feel like if I don't get a film and somebody else does, then that film never belonged to me. The ones I get belong to me.”