Top 119 Quotes & Sayings by Laura Linney - Page 2

I tend to make low-budget movies but, yeah, I make more money than I ever thought I would make.

I'm profoundly lucky. I really like it. I really like my work. I've liked it since I was 5 years old.

If you have two parents who have to work, who want to work, you need to have someone to guide your child.

I always laugh to myself when I listen to some really big A-list star saying that they are just a normal person.

Fame didn't happen to me in my 20s, it has been a gradual thing which probably makes it easier to deal with.

The only really conscious decision I made was to cast my net wide and if the work was good, to do it.

My parents were divorced and I would spend weekends with my father.

I just want to say, 'Go work! It doesn't matter what it is. Work begets work. Just go!'

I just have to concentrate on doing what I do.

I certainly didn't have a nanny.

I could have gone to the gym for three hours a day and bought into all that, but I just wasn't interested.

What I find so interesting about people is the choices they make, and how that effects their behavior, their sense of self and their relationships.

I can scarcely stand to have a manicure. I have to have them because you don't want to look like a disgusting human being - it's self-care and it has to happen, but I get very restless.

With big, emotional roles it's very easy, especially if you've grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character.

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.

I am very lucky, because for the most part people are very nice to me, and I am still able to go about my life and ride the subway and all that.

I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write. Language and punctuation is used specifically, and most of the time actors can find wonderful clues about character in the rhythm and cadence of the language used.

You can watch someone on-stage cry and cry - but in the audience you feel nothing. It's easy to become indulgent. For me, what's important is the story first.

I've seen the greatest actors in the world, transcendent talents, who can't find a home.

I love 70's music.

I hope that anyone I worked with wouldn't exploit our relationship.

I'm very hard on my bags because I tend to carry a lot of stuff with me.

I'm lucky because I don't like being in the sun a whole lot, just because the repercussions for me - I feel it, I go very red.

Ask "why" until there is no more "why."

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.

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.

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.

To be too knowing is a downfall.

People have to look to the right places for guidance. Looking at a certain type of entertainment shouldn't be where you go for guidance. To zone out, have a laugh, sure - but it's not a great example on how to navigate on a journey. There are other places to look.

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.

The (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) stories were great, for one. The thing that makes him a remarkable character is how he can withstand all of these different interpretations and different styles and, that's what makes a classic character a classic character; they keep coming back and you see them in a new way every time.

I'm always curious, but I'm learning things I never thought I'd learn. I get to travel to places I never thought I'd go.

I don't mind aging. I mean, my whole thing is, it's just a privilege to age.

Collaboration. ... For me, it has informed every move I've ever made. And it saved me in many ways and still does. When things get hard, you can cling to the work.

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.

The basic laws of good acting are the same, but everything about the experience is different-your job responsibility, the time you spend on it.

My parents were divorced and I didn't grow up with my father, but I spent a lot of time around him, and his influence on me has been profound.

There's a real passing down in the theater, almost ad nauseam. You have to listen to older people talk about their experience, but it makes you very aware of what has come before you or what is coming after you - that you're a part of a link in a chain. It's not all about you.

But I've also spread my net very wide. 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.

I know what people want to hear is the connection with the son, Roger, when you have a child. I would love to tell that there was an epiphany as to what it is to be a mom, but I didn't feel any difference there.

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.

It was so soon after I'd had my son and I really wasn't planning on going back to work for a while. I will walk over hot coals to work with Bill Condon on anything, the experience that you have with him is just too good... I've certainly never worked with him before so the trio of Bill [Codon], Ian [McKellen], and Sherlock Holmes, and England: it was too much to say "no" to.

Things get complicated at times, so there are certainly moments when you wish your life were different. That's true for everybody, not just people in our profession. But there's nothing I feel like I gave up professionally. I'm absolutely doing what I enjoy.

I think everyone's journey through this crazy, weird, wild, wonderful area of work named acting is really their own. And if you're going for something that isn't yours, you're wasting time. You could be focused on your own work instead of thinking about somebody else.

I never felt like a happy-go-lucky ingenue to begin with. And parts are written better when you're older. When you're young, you're written to be an ingenue, and you're written to be a quality. You're actually not written to be a person, you're written for your youth to inspire someone else, usually a man. So I find it just much more liberating.

Some big movies are terrific, and some aren't. They're made for different reasons, and they have different impacts and they're very different experiences making them. But if they're good, if you're with good people, then hooray.

I know that actors and actresses have a great reputation for being very, very selfish, and in some cases, that's very true. But in the theater I find it doesn't help you to be selfish. You sort of have to be selfless in the theater, and the more selfless you are - that doesn't mean don't take care of yourself - but the more you sort of surrender to the work, I find, the better the work is. That's just my experience.

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.

I don't consider myself a celebrity, and I don't consider myself a star.

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.

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.

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.

I think everybody handles things very differently and you can conjecture, but until you're put in that situation, you really don't know.

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.

There's something grueling but very appealing about rough, to-the-bone material in a low budget context. There's less between you and the material. There are less people. There is less time. There's often less technology. You have to concentrate very intensely, and you jump in a little deeper because there's nothing in your way... but there are challenges.

I love to work in all sorts of different situations. I think you learn a lot, which is why I try not to approach something the same way, because it might not be appropriate, and then you can get lazy just out of boredom. So I love any approach.

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.

That's my favorite food group: donut. I love the donut.

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.