Julie Bowen quotes:

It's a war of attrition. If you have patience and a modicum of faith in yourself your chances are not too bad.

It was harder to get my driver's license than to get pregnant and give birth.

I've had a little bad, bad media luck the new year. Well, apparently I'm dating Bill Clinton, which makes me nervous. I didn't know, though.

Children are like crazy, drunken small people in your house.

I'm on a strict gossip diet. No gossip websites, no gossip magazines. Otherwise, I find it paralyzing to exist.

I was class mom at the preschool one year and I was pretty much asked not to do that again!

Baltimore is a great place.

I suffer the terrible disease of low self-esteem.

I've loved doing 'E.R.' for the quality of the writing and the great people I get to work with.

My parents had an old-fashioned ideal of college, that four years at a liberal arts college should be a liberal arts education.

I'm so not stylish by nature, but I've learned to work with what I have.

I grew up playing field hockey and lacrosse - prep school sport - and I was terrible at them.

Sometimes good enough is good enough.

Women in Hollywood are tiny, but women in soap operas are the tiniest people alive!

I met Clinton at a benefit for teachers, which was a very good charity, but I met him for about 90 seconds, and I thought it was important to meet the leader of the free world. So I stood next to him for a photograph, and then apparently that's all it takes.

Immaculate conception is the only way another kid is coming out of me!

I guess I'm not that aware of such a big fan base. I have a few core people who write me no matter what I'm doing, but I hardly have sacks of mail being dropped on my door!

My darling father gave me some decent getaway sticks - my legs are OK."

As I have gotten older, I've discovered the joys of being lazy.

I consider a day without running a crappy day. When I don't get to run, I am a grump, but some days my schedule just doesn't allow me to.

I have a big mouth.

I play a scientist in a futuristic world in which 99% of the men have been wiped out. As a result, the women are nearly all homosexuals and the children are cloned.

[Preparing for award shows] gets insane. The dress, the hair, the makeup...I end up always picking the dress at the last second.

I haven't really had that many opportunities to play 'lead' so I guess I jumped at the chance. I have also never done any 'sci-fi' projects and thought it might be fun.

You don't want people to suffer or get fat when they're pregnant.

I do find it odd people choose to do stuff that makes them look like crazy Hollywood faces, but I've got zero judgment.

I discovered on school days, when they've got to get up at 6:30, they won't get out of bed. But on the weekends, they were up at 6 a.m. I was like, "Why do you guys wake up so early on the weekends?" It's like, "Because I wake up and I think, Is it a TV day? And if it is..." So we had to change that rule. I'm like, "Thank you for telling me what I need to do."

I have this fancy Givenchy bag. I don't know what the Kardashians have in their bags - I bet they have really expensive products or six cellphones or something. I have a cellphone and some lipstick for me, and the rest is just filled with stuff for the kids - sunscreen and lip balm and little Ziploc bags of pretzels and cheese sticks.

There's an expression: Great is the enemy of the good. Sometimes in trying to be great, you make a mess of things.

I live alone with my one dog and they say it like it's a sad, it's a terrible thing. This woman lives alone with her two cats.

My husband is very funny and his humor has gotten us through a lot. He's good at defusing me.

I read books more than I go out. As a matter of fact, I get a little concerned about some of my anti-social habits. I will choose a night with Somerset Maugham or Russell Banks over a crowded bar any day.

I just can't seem to make myself care about what I look like when I am working out.

I read books more than I go out.

I tell my kids, "Look, your life is a video game, and I have to get you from level zero to 18 as an independent person with all your skills and limbs intact. Every time you hit your brother or throw food, you're taking us all back."

I would like to say that I am a very relaxed, loving person who is not competitive, but that's a lie!

I'm built like a 14-year-old boy. I have no waist, so anything I wear has to have a lot of trickeration going on. I don't fit into girl dresses. I can't just slip it on.

Kids think the world is about them, so if you forgot to put the right flavor yogurt in their lunch, and they have too much homework when they come home, they're like, "You know I hate peach!" There's a part of me that's like, "I'm so sorry. I could have shown my love more."

Success is getting up one more time than you fall down.

I would love to do more movies, but the reality is women have many more opportunities on television to play a greater variety of characters.

I have three kids. I should know how to take care of them.

I had many decades of me time and now I just don't have that anymore. There are days when I rail against it.

I feel the most pulled together when I'm going for the tomboyish thing.

We can't have iPads until after 7 p.m. Otherwise the entire day is, "iPad time? What about now?" It makes me crazy. And no TV on weekend mornings.

As a matter of fact, I get a little concerned about some of my anti-social habits.

I use an app called ChoreMonster. The kids earn points for brushing teeth or picking up the dog poop. It's genius.

I always come across sounding like I hate my children. I actually love them very much.

We make them [kids] earn the stuff they want. They're not going to play with their iPad today unless they do their chores.

I don't always run in the mornings, but I am definitely better if I run in the mornings.

How many times can you say, "No yanking on one another's genitals?" Everything is hilarious until someone starts crying.

We've had four or five casts in three years. There was a point when I thought the Department of Children and Family Services was going to show up at my door!

I read some article where Reese Witherspoon said, "If you're not yelling at your kids, you're not spending enough time with them." It made me feel so much better.

Everyone [of my kids] can ride a bike now, so the park has had a big resurgence in our life. We also play a lot of dumb drawing games.

At restaurants, I carry paper and markers and tell everyone to draw a picture with a unicorn, an octopus and an explosion. That keeps them [kids] still for a minute.

I take the kids skiing every year, and my husband doesn't always go. The way I grew up, that's very normal. My mom would take us skiing, but my dad hates cold weather.

In my family, Mom can lead the sports activities, no problem! Except football - that, my husband does.

Kids don't seem to recognize when they're hungry until they're starving and in the emergency zone, so I'm like, "Who wants some apple slices and cheese?"

I really like putting the kids to bed. Everyone is cozy and snuggly. Nobody is giving anyone a hard time, and everybody reads.

I count myself lucky to be fairly anonymous but occasionally have people tell me nice things.

I'm most certainly not the Beatles.

I think it's pretty common for people to get excited when they meet somebody that they know from the media.

I frequently do drive carpool in the clothes I slept in, because it's impossible to get three children out the door with lunches packed and all that stuff and have a do.

I'm in total celebrity denial in general, but there's awareness that probably if somebody has met you, they might go and tell somebody. I just would rather have the word on the street stay at a neutral, not like, "She shows up in a ball gown," but "She seemed nice." That's fine.