Mary-Louise Parker quotes:

My favorite scene in all of movies is Gregory Peck in 'To Kill A Mockingbird': You see him where he's on the porch, and his face is almost completely obscured. I don't want to see his face.

People have a problem with me being different, but that propels me forward in life.

I like to pretend that I'm a tough guy. It's kind of an admission of defeat if I have to ask for help - or even kindness. But if it doesn't come, at some point I snap and demand it.

People ask me, 'Why are you doing a show on Showtime?' Because I'll do anything really, I don't really care, I'll do a show on Nickelodeon if I thought it was well written. Actually Nickelodeon's kind of awesome.

Mediocrity is underrated.

I don't live in Los Angeles and I don't do a lot of superfluous press.

Words are really powerful. I don't believe that axiom at all - words can absolutely hurt you. Words can wound. They can do a lot of damage. I think they can do way more damage than sticks and stones. I'll take sticks and stones.

My parents have been together for 65 years. They're both really stubborn. They're not quitters.

I like A&E. I like those corny intimate-portrait things. They're so kind of ingenious and artificial and soothing.

I certainly was never the pretty girl at school, but I can go to a lot of different places with this face.

I don't get tired of hearing that somebody liked my work.

I never feel more useful than when I'm making my kids a bowl of soup.

In college, my teachers were usually after me for going after comedy too much, leaning too much in that direction.

My way to combat anything is just to walk straight into it with my fists up.

I feel like movies, if there's any kind of budget whatsoever, there's so much sitting, and I really like to work. Otherwise my blood sugar just drops, you know, six hours sitting in a camper.

There's a lot of time sitting in movies, so you can put alligators in people's trailers in your spare time. So it [making a film] moves slower, which in some ways is great, because you can live with a scene and invest in it a lot. And in some ways it's hard, because sometimes you can start to lose your energy a little bit, but both are fun.

I do love my avocados, which are great for the skin. I eat pretty healthfully.

I enjoy cooking and baking. Alicia Silverstone's vegan cookbook is awesome.

I don't think you necessarily have to be part of a traditional nuclear family to be a good mother.

I don't think it's that controversial. I'm really in favor of legalizing marijuana. I thought people would be more offended by [this series] than they are. I'm surprised they weren't.

The theater is who I am - it's where I feel the most inspired, the most at home, the most useful.

My mother is a beauty.

I always wondered what people thought of it because it looked so stupid to me on the page and I loved the other finale so I thought it was going to be really stupid but some people really liked it.

There's something really sweet about the way he's playing the part and he's kind of irresistible in a way. They're both really lonely. That's kind of established from the very beginning in the movie. The way they meet is just classic, lonely losers.

I'm not comfortable with getting a job by being at the right Hollywood party; I'm not a terribly sociable creature.

I don't really ever think about whether or not I like the characters I'm playing. I'm more into the minutiae of their behaviour or what they're doing in a certain scene.

I'll take any trophy. I don't care what it says on it

I don't often see the movies I'm in; I'm usually disappointed in myself and it only serves to make me self-conscious.

Don't have a fall back, because if you do, you'll fall back.

I don't put myself out there, so people aren't necessarily familiar with me or my face.

I don't think anyone honestly would hire me, so I don't think I have to worry but, if it was well written I would do it. I would do anything

I have a child and I don't want to be at work all the time when he's small. I want to spend time with him.

I have to say, I haven't really worked with that many people in my career that I haven't liked, which I think is really rare.

I haven't read the comic book. I didn't even know there was one until about halfway though. Helen Mirren and I were talking about that actually, who also felt kind of silly. When we had to run she was like, 'Oh God, we're both going to get fired.' The running sequences, it's a particular kind of humiliation because it's fun.

I just get to go to work with such great actors who are so talented, especially Elizabeth (Perkins). You are so wonderful and kind and good and wonderful and sexy and great, and I just want to make out with all of you.

I just want to make lunches and organize my kids' playroom.

I never know why people come up to me. I think a lot of them just get super-excited because they recognize me from TV but they don't remember where.

I really like the director [for Weeds]. I don't know if you've spoken to him yet but he's really, really intelligent. He was just really kind when I met him and nice and really told me why I should play the part...and kind of really didn't argue with him. He's just really, really smart and assembled these really great people. I felt like he really knows how to enlist his intelligence to get you - I don't know - he's really hard to argue with I find.

I really prefer acting in the theater the most. In some ways TV is closer to that because there's more of a regularity to the schedule. You have to finish an episode by a certain day. Movies can just go on interminably.

I thought the other ones were so obviously - what are we going to do if she burns down the house? The DEA, which I think was maybe the best one because she's wearing the jacket when she goes through the mirror and I think that was kind of amazing because you really weren't expecting that. There's something almost slapstick about this in a way that worried me. It was a little pratfalley with the golf club and the - but I think it probably cut together okay.

I'm just damseling mostly. I'm not very good with a gun.

I'm naked in Esquire in August. I was naked on the set the other day. I'm always naked. I'm naked right now, in fact,

I'm not saying pot is a bad thing. I know plenty of people who should be smoking pot. I'm just not one of those people. I don't think it would be the best drug for me. What am I going to do, start doing drugs at my age? It's a little late. I'm a mother of two. It's probably not the best idea for me to start getting into it now.

It's good to feel stupid sometimes and do things that are out of your comfort zone.

It's the best part of the whole movie. John Malkovich with a pink pig is - you can't get better than that. Then John Malkovich alone and then you add a pink pig.

Look, I don't care if anyone likes me when it comes to my work. But I can be massively insecure in other parts of my life.

My sister's fish tacos are out of control. I'd give her a restaurant if I were a gazillionaire.

One person's crazy is another person's refreshing.

The first thing I ever bought for myself was a green Lacoste shirt.

Unless you got a really good reason, you should be nice.

Usually I'm trying to turn something around or turn it inside out and see what's underneath. I know that probably sounds incredibly vague but I never set out to be likeable or funny or anything like that. I'm just trying to tell the story in the best way that I can and serve the writer because it's really about the writer.

Well, it's kind of like that classic sort of trajectory in this kind of movie where there's conflict and they're estranged and they kind of grow to love each other but they don't show it. Then at the end - it's kind of like that. But I think the characters are more interesting than that.

We're dodging bullets and this is right after we've just seen [inaudible] shot and we're running and the woman who John accused of being out to kill us and everyone thought he was kidding. When we see her she appears and she's after us.

With TV, there's a continuum with the crew and the cast so you feel like you have a sense of community in a way, which is similar to theater.

Yeah, when you work with somebody that famous everybody wants to know what are they like or - but I know some of the movies that I know because they're more like NOBODY'S FOOL or like that, because I don't really watch the big R movies, I haven't really seen them so much. I loved him [Bruce Willis] from his TV show and some of the smaller movies he's done. The bigger movies I start to space out in, like, there just so, I don't really watch those kind of movies so much.

You can never really tell, it's kind of a red herring until you see the project I think. You just know if you like working with someone or not, and he does have a real sweetness about him, I think.

You can tell actually when he starts to talk about his family, or his Daughters, or his Wife, and his whole face - really he's so really kind of a dear.

Toronto I've worked in so many times so you kind of just know every store, every hotel, every - it's really close to New York so it's awesome for my children so if I have to go home for two days it doesn't take very much time. Except for Air Canada. Air Canada is the worst part.