There is a misperception, if you will, in critical response or even in Hollywood, that I can only do exaggerated characters. Or what they would call over-the-top performances. Well, this is completely false.

Guy Pearce is very precise and clear about understanding the rhythm and the music of a scene.

If I could have been a marine biologist I would have, but I didn't have that kind of intelligence. Numbers were never my strong point.

I think what makes people fascinating is conflict, it's drama, it's the human condition. Nobody wants to watch perfection.

The one test I have for every completed book is if I feel head over heels in love with the hero. If he hasn't stolen my heart from the previous hero, I know the book isn't right.

I've got fabulous women friends that I kind of didn't have while I was married. I realized the great need for that when the marriage started to disintegrate.

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf, to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. 'What! no soap?' So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.