Kathy Bates quotes:

After winning the Oscar, I was committed to do 'Fried Green Tomatoes,' but I didn't know what the next thing would be after that. It was a scary time. But the advantage of TV is the regular work. All you need is a hit series, I guess.

It was also wonderful to have the prospect of playing with Jack Nicholson. It was a terrific part, a terrific script, with Alexander Payne and Jack Nicholson. You can't get any better than that!

The Oscar changed everything. Better salary, working with better people, better projects, more exposure, less privacy.

I went from years of honing my craft to sudden recognition. It was quite a life changer.

I'm very lucky to be able to do what I love to do, and I hope I can keep doing it for a while.

I have always had a problem with my weight.

 My 14-year-old grandniece is not allowed to watch 'American Horror Story' yet.

I haven't talked much about being an ovarian cancer survivor because I don't really want to define myself that way.

Drama comes more naturally to me. It's the comedy you really have to delve into.

I heard I'm going to have scenes with Lady Gaga so I'm hoping it's true. I know of one scene I have.

The roles I was lucky enough to get were real stretches for me: usually a character who was older, or a little weird, or whatever. And it was hard, not just for the lack of work but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.

I look for a role that hopefully I feel empathy with and that I can understand and love, but also that has that challenge for me to play - a different kind of role, a different type of character, a different time period.

I hope I look skinnier in 3D. I hope I don't look three times as fat. That'll be disappointing.

I think that being in an environment is a much richer experience than just working on a soundstage.

I'm not a stunning woman.

I'm not that conservative. I do feel - I guess I'm more of a Democrat at heart, although I've never affiliated myself with a particular party.

Alexander Payne's very specific. His scripts are always complete when you start working on them.

Every time an Oscar is given out, an agent gets his wings.

For a long time I did not want to do television because I did not want to get stuck playing the same person. I wanted the ongoing challenge of a variety of roles.

I have to pay the bills just like everybody else, but it also pays my soul to work.

Now if I go through it again, I think I would be a lot more open about it. I admire people who have been open like Melissa Ethridge and women I see walking around facing it without wigs and all of that stuff. I think I would be more courageous next time.

I was never an ingenue. I've always just been a character actor. When I was younger, it was a real problem, because I was never pretty enough. It was hard, not just for the lack of work, but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.

And people are always saying: 'Well, you go to Hollywood and you get yourself a film career or a TV series, and then you can do anything you want. Because then you've got the clout.' That had always sounded like a lot of hooey to me, but now I think it's true, unfortunately.

Because I'm a woman, because I'm a character actress, because I'm over 40, I'll be very interested to see, not just for me but for other actresses, how Hollywood treats us in the next ten, fifteen years. I'm hoping that it's not going to be so easy to shove people under the rug, as they have in the past.

A lot of guys come up talking about The Waterboy. I get a lot of that. Misery, Delores Claiborne and The Waterboy, those are the main ones I get.

I can sit here on the couch and hear you say, "You're very feminine and very attractive," but I have always struggled with that.

I didn't go out on one date in high school. I played guitar and sang and wrote my own music and poetry and stuff when I was a teenager.

I find it safer to pursue the powerful, the ugly, the unpleasant.

I find that I'm fighting to keep my energy and my passion centered on the work and not on "Will this get me an Oscar?" - which is the way people are starting to talk to me. I'm not interested in the way people are starting to talk to me. I'm not interested in looking at a role that way. That's not what I ever did, and it's not how I can continue to do my work.

I have no idea and I think Steven King strongest suit is the characters that he does create, all in the same area where he lives. The way he describes them is one of his fortes and it boggles my mind how he's able to do that and to create so many. It must be thousands by now.

I love everything. I love being the empathetic characters. I love being the villains. I think it's like when we're kids, we like to play all kinds of crazy characters and dress up.

I ran into Stephen King once in New York a few years ago and outside the Carlyle and he said, "You're in the pink." Which sounded so Stephen King. He's doing well I think after his accident and all of that, years and years ago.

I read Stephen King a lot and I've actually played two roles. Delores Claiborne is my favorite, I think, of any film that I've done.

I see my sisters, my mother, my grandmother. I like the way I look. I think I have a nice face. I like my eyes, my mouth. I have a good nose. I have good skin.

I try to always stretch myself to fit the characters that have been presented.

I want to be defined by my own essence.

I want to see women onscreen the way I see them in society.

I was a Stephen King fan and I was amazed that I got the chance to play that role and very glad that I did.

I'm a horror movie fan to begin with, so to come back to the genre, I feel like horror has been very good to me.

I've always tried to be honest, and it would be too difficult for me to develop some kind of persona. I don't have enough time or energy for that.

My mother used to tell this corny story about how the doctor smacked me on the behind when I was born and I thought it was applause, and I have been looking for it ever since.

O.K., we had women's lib in the '60s, the women fought for their roles, they're out there in the work force. Now let's talk about how they're dealing with things as human beings.

The bottom line is that I'm an actor, so when somebody pitches me a great part, it's a no-brainer. You never know what it's gonna be like, in terms of the actual experience. You can be really excited about a part that can turn out shitty, you can have a bad time, there's a bad egg or two or three, in the bunch, or the producers are weird, or something like that.

The problem I have these days is that women are often cast in a role - as a police officer, for example - and then are invariably perceived by the other characters as succeeding in a man's job, as if they're doing it in spite of being women.

The relationship to the director is becoming more crucial to me, making sure there are some common goals. I haven't been in the kind of position where my roles have been chosen for me, where someone says, "First we'll do this and then we'll do this," and it's all part of some master plan.

The thing that I've run up against is that it's always been an either-or proposition, especially in Hollywood. You're either young and glamorous and you're going to get the lead and get the man at the end of the picture, or it's the opposite: you're a character actress, you're not attractive enough for the other role, and so you're playing the friend or the killer or the lesbian or the doctor or whatever.

There are a lot of powerful women in Hollywood who have been movie stars for a long time who are getting into their forties and fifties. I still want to see them work.

We all love to hear a good story. We save our stories in books. We save our books in libraries. Libraries are the storyhouses full of all those stories and secrets.

When I was in New Orleans, I was in a grocery store and a woman came up to me and she said, "Oh, my daughter's such a big fan of the show." And I said, "Can I meet her?" And around the corner came this seven-year-old. I was horrified and I almost said to her, "Lady, what are you doing? [American Horror Story] is not for seven-year-olds, I can tell you."

You hope that the same people are coming back. I love playing with Angela [Bassett]. She's fierce. I met her years and years ago when she was a student at Yale, so to see her do these fierce roles and go on to [be] this powerhouse has just been awesome.

A heart can only discover what it really wants with experience.