Laura Linney quotes:

I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side.

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.

I think the way we talk about cancer has really evolved. I remember the way my grandmother used to talk about it, like a death sentence, no-one would even mention the word.

It is always good to explore the stuff you don't agree with, to try and understand a different lifestyle or foreign worldview. I like to be challenged in that way, and always end up learning something I didn't know.

A magnetic personality doesn't necessarily indicate a good heart.

For me to have the opportunity to stay with one character for, God willing, a long period of time, is really exciting.

I had learning disabilities, and I couldn't express myself in the written word.

Traits like humility, courage, and empathy are easily overlooked - but it's immensely important to find them in your closest relationships.

When your life is being threatened there's an instinctive urge to fight. You fight for the time you have, for your relationships.

It's always nice when you do something and it's well received as opposed to the other way which God knows happens to everybody. When the good times come around, you take a deep breath, appreciate it, but not take it too seriously.

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.

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

People's view of cancer will change when they have their own relationship with cancer, which everyone will, at some point.

I love to work in all sorts of different situations.

I believe that no matter what you do in life, if you learn the basics through theater, it will help you in everything else - problem solving, communication, discipline, all of that stuff.

Courtroom dramas can be boring.

Just because you're not famous, doesn't mean you're not good.

Working with special needs children is hard.

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.

My family is from the South, and I can remember all those ladies I grew up with, like my great-aunts, who had handkerchiefs. There's something sweet about them.

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.

The goal seems to me at times just to be business first.

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

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.

Doing the right thing has power.

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 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.

I had a good imagination and I still have one; a child-like imagination that hasn't gone away.

Fear, anxiety and neurosis: that's just in the suitcase when you're an actor.

I love working closely with people.

I've always thought that I'm sexy in my own right, but not in a way that people thought was bankable.

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.

At school I was always trying to con my teachers into letting me act out book reports instead of writing them.

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

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

It is always good to explore the stuff you don't agree with, to try and understand a different lifestyle or foreign worldview. I like to be challenged in that way, and always end up learning something I didn't know."

I have a bag with a toothbrush and toothpaste and all the things I might need during the day. I call the bag my trailer. Sometimes you don't have a trailer, so that's my trailer.

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

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 had learning disabilities, and I couldn't express myself in the written word,

I grew up in Manhattan and, since my father was a playwright, all I ever wanted to be was a stage actress.

To be too knowing is a downfall.

Tanning is tricky, because a lot of people just look orange.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I crave a cone of silence every once in while.

I find the whole disdain for ageing crazy.

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.

I'm not someone who likes to have my picture taken, let alone see it plastered all over the place.

I mean, the idea of losing a parent is really inconceivable. I think there's just an undertone of dread about the subject, so people don't talk about it and don't prepare for it.

You know when someone's over-flattering you in a way. You smile but you can't believe it.

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

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.

Cancer is so much bigger than a TV show.

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.

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

History's a resource.

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

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 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.

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

I don't think you should exploit your own pain.

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 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.

I get cold - really cold - when I travel.

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 love actors, regardless of where they are in their skill level. There's something terribly satisfying about working with someone who's really learning.

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.

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 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'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.

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.

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.

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

People can't really place me. They're not really sure who I am. Sometimes they think I'm Helen Hunt. Sometimes they think I'm Laura Dern.

Some people's personalities are so compelling that they command attention.

Soon after I'd had my son 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.

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.

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.

The entertainment industry is terrified of silence.

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.

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.

What I love about a play is that it's such an investment because only time can create a lot of what happens onstage.

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.

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.

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.

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.