Laura Linney
People's view of cancer will change when they have their own relationship with cancer, which everyone will, at some point.
Cancer is so much bigger than a TV show.
People can't really place me. They're not really sure who I am.
Some people's personalities are so compelling that they command attention.
Doing the right thing has power.
I don't think I'm exactly gregarious, you know. I'm not usually known as the loud person in the room.
The good thing is that I'm always honest.
Working with special needs children is hard.
It's very hard to put forth a film that's about love and the joy of love and for it not to be patronising and not make people nauseous or make them roll their eyes.
I love working closely with people.
History's a resource.
If there's one thing that I've done on purpose it's to take whatever job, so long as it's interesting and challenging, whether it's theatre, radio, TV or film.
My castings sort of go in phases. There'll be several icy professional parts - a lawyer or a cop. And then there'll be the intelligent-but-wounded group and then the period things. It goes in sequence.
Courtroom dramas can be boring.
I'm sure my father had more to do with my career than I would like to give him credit for. I would love to think it was all me!
I have an instinct to want to be part of a group of people. I feel safe there. That's why I was in school for so long.
What I hope in my ideal world is that with each project, I'll either get to work with a really great script that would force me to grow, or work with a really great actor who will make me better.
Comedy is a way to make sense of chaos. It's a way of dealing with things that are overwhelming, that threaten you; it's a way to survive and get closer to the truth.
I find the whole disdain for ageing crazy.
I don't want to spend my life in my 40s feeling bad about being in my 40s, and then all of a sudden I'm 50, and I will have missed a whole decade!
I enjoy learning about different periods and people, and then taking what's universal about the human condition and seeing where it matches up. No matter where you are, certain things unite everybody.
What I love about a play is that it's such an investment because only time can create a lot of what happens onstage.
I'm absolutely doing what I enjoy.
My experience is that's rare - that you have a script that is... what they call 'film-ready.'
I don't think you should exploit your own pain.
A lot of what is publicized now is really pretty trivial stuff - you know, what I eat for breakfast, where I have my pedicures, questions that I just cannot for the life of me understand why someone would want to know that.
When your life is being threatened there's an instinctive urge to fight. You fight for the time you have, for your relationships.
The entertainment industry is terrified of silence.
I'm not someone who likes to have my picture taken, let alone see it plastered all over the place.
I just have to concentrate on doing what I do.
What people can survive and what they don't survive is shocking to me. Someone can go to Iraq and be blown to bits and survive. Someone can trip and fall on the street and they die - that's that.
All the things that most kids hated, I loved. I loved that things were asked of me and that, much to my surprise, I was able to do them. I loved the 10 o'clock bedtime. I loved the responsibility.
When you're dying, you're liberated to do what you want to do. You give yourself permission. I think everyone's experience with a terminal disease is so deeply personal and unique to the person, the context in which they're living and the relationships that they have.Collection: Unique
When you tell people, your world changes, your identity changes and people treat you differently. And then, not only do you have to deal with your own emotional response to what's going on, but you take on everybody else's emotional response.Collection: Emotional
I find that things don't bother me as much. If I had a bad day on set, it sort of just rolls of my back in a way that it didn't before. So that's where the biggest difference is, stuff that used to get under my skin or that I would worry about or be anxious about just isn't a problem. So in some ways, having a child has been very liberating. I found it very liberating.Collection: Children
I get very, very, very irritable with people who complain about getting old, because I know a lot of people who would gladly trade places with us. I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not saying it doesn't hurt your feelings, I'm not saying it's not painful - and physically as well as mentally and spiritually - and it's frightening at times. However, people have really lost perspective, and it's a really bizarre topic of conversation that it's become a cultural peg in our world that aging is a bad thing. It's not logical to me.Collection: Hurt
Most scripts are written to be green lit. They're not written to be acted. And a lot of writers with the greatest intention in the world don't write for actors. They don't understand the architecture of what an actor needs to get from point A to point B.Collection: Writing
Theater is the foundation of how I live my life, actually. My father was a playwright, so I was around it all the time and loved to talk shop with him, just loved it. And basically everything that I hold to be good and true and worthy, I learned in the theater. So not even just about the work, but just about life. Discipline, problem solving, creativity, how to get along with people.Collection: Father
We all have a limited amount and that it's a privilege to grow old. That's something that I think a lot of people have forgotten in this very fast-paced world where youth is overly celebrate.Collection: Thinking
You have a lot more to give, the older you get. And you want to give it. I mean, some people want to give it. But there is a desire to pass down, to have a hand in the past and a hand in the future. There's a continuum.Collection: Mean
That's my favorite food group: donut. I love the donut.Collection: Favorite Foods
I still know I have an awful lot to learn, and I hope I'm put in whatever situation it is that's gonna help me learn it, or that I'll get to watch really good people do what they do.Collection: People
Ask "why" until there is no more "why."Collection: Asks
I think everybody handles things very differently and you can conjecture, but until you're put in that situation, you really don't know.Collection: Thinking
Our culture is set up on a feud mentality, or a "Housewives" mentality, that women just fight. And it's such a shallow way to exist as far as our evolution is concerned, and our culture is concerned. It's fun to watch women fight, in a storytelling way, but in the world, women shouldn't be seen as a threat to other women.Collection: Fun
The thing about death is that it's honest. I go to things that have a core of honesty about them and there's nothing more honest than death.Collection: Honesty
Where I did feel a difference is learning to just work in a different way so that your resources are not completely depleted so that you don't have anything to give to your child when you go home, and fortunately I've been working long enough that I know how to make that shift so that I don't compromise my work or compromise my relationships; not compromising parenting is really the biggest difference.Collection: Children
I don't mind aging. I mean, my whole thing is, it's just a privilege to age.Collection: Mean
I love actors, regardless of where they are in their skill level. There's something terribly satisfying about working with someone who's really learning.Collection: Skills