Sarah Jessica Parker quotes:

And if you are a parent, introduce your children to their neighborhood library. It will give them a real sense of independence to have their own library card and enjoy borrowing books.

I think growing up in a big family taught me a lot of problem solving and how to share and compromise, and that's been helpful in my marriage.

I just wasn't one of those girls who dreamt of her wedding day and the birth of her first child.

My job requires me to put on a little dress and run around the streets of New York in heels. But I also had the financial means to hire a yoga teacher to come to my house while my sitter watched the newborn. For 95 percent of the world, that's not realistic.

When men attempt bold gestures, generally it's considered romantic. When women do it, it's often considered desperate or psycho.

I believe in God, but in my own unconventional way. We're not affiliated with any organisation, and I have no religious education of any kind, but I definitely have my own kind of ideas about it.

One of the things that's great about New York is that it is not a one-industry town. It has education, academia, the service industry, arts, publishing, theater, politics, fashion, finance, as well as movie-making.

I do wait in line, and I do take the subway, and I do my own grocery shopping, and I do take the kids to school. But it almost doesn't matter to a certain segment of the populace.

I don't judge others. I say if you feel good with what you're doing, let your freak flag fly.

When real people fall down in life, they get right back up and keep walking.

I have a lot of responsibilities outside myself. I have a large family. I want to know I can always be helpful.

What I've learned about being a parent is how much you sort of secretly learn from everyone else and how valuable it is.

There are occasions that I love to be fashionable and enjoy, you know? But the work day of a mother doesn't include a hair making team or any consideration of your shoe.

In a relationship, when does the art of compromise become compromising?

I love the opportunity to wear something really special and go to a wonderful event at some great cultural institution.

We all live in a time where we're supposed to have choices and how do we wrangle that and how do we make the best choices for ourselves and our families. It has nothing to do with feminism.

The beautiful thing about New York is, you have to expose yourself to other people the minute you step outside the door. There is no choice. And I love that.

I still like getting dressed up and having the opportunity to borrow beautiful dresses, but as a mother - and as somebody who's schedule isn't always my own - I don't shop a lot, or think about clothes a lot.

Balls are to men what purses are to women.

It's not like it's hard to be decent and respectful and well-behaved. I do wait in line, and I do take the subway, and I do do my own grocery shopping, and I do take the kids to school.

I'm very, very concerned about the Bush presidency. I'm worried about the kinds of cuts in domestic programs that mean something to a lot of people, including members of my family, who depend on certain things from the government.

I love Matthew Broderick. Call me crazy, but I love him. We can only be in the marriage we are. We're very devoted to our family and our lives. I love our life. I love that he's the father of my children, and it's because of him that there's this whole other world that I love.

People always assume that I'm some sort of party girl, and that's such a misconception because I like staying home.

So we strive for perfection in the areas in which we can control, and that isn't necessarily what provides contentment and joy for ourselves and, more importantly, for our children.

I'm a bitter-ender. It's potentially my fatal flaw that I do not give up on something. I will not rest. I work and work and work until I can no longer and someone has to remove me from the premises.

If you're in a series, you can't quit, you can't work in the theatre and you can't do a movie when you like.

I never wanted to be a celebrity; I never wanted to be famous. And in my daily life, I work really hard to not trade on it in any way.

I write about sex, not love. What do I know about love?

As a woman, I have an inherent need to be all things to all people, to make certain everybody's taken care of. I know I can't sustain that level all the time, so I'm finding the proper balance and it's made me infinitely happier.

It was very flattering when Manolo Blahnik named a shoe after me.

Friends are readily disappointed by the size of my closet. And I thought it was big!

You can't live in New York City and be the most important person in town; you just can't. There are too many other important people here.

Follow your instincts and do not let other people's opinion of you become your opinion of yourself.

It's like the riddle of the Sphinx... why are there so many great unmarried women, and no great unmarried men?

Being single used to mean that nobody wanted you. Now it means you're pretty sexy and you're taking your time deciding how you want your life to be and who you want to spend it with.

People go to casinos for the same reason they go on blind dates - hoping to hit the jackpot. But mostly, you just wind up broke or alone in a bar.

After all, computers crash, people die, relationships fall apart. The best we can do is breath and reboot.

So many roads. So many detours. So many choices. So many mistakes.

It's never been integral to the story that I take my clothes off. I've always had clauses in my contracts saying no nudity and no body doubles... I admire actresses who can do it without feeling exploited. As long as it's their own free will, I think it's great. It's not a moral judgement, I've just never felt comfortable doing it - I'm too modest.

I developed a really strong work ethic, and I don't take anything for granted.

I don't believe in email. I'm an old-fashioned girl. I prefer calling and hanging up.

As we speed along this endless road to the destination called who we hope to be, I can't help but whine, 'Are we there yet?'.

I think women of a certain generation, mine in particular, feel like we can have it all because that's what we were fed. It's like, we reap the benefits of the feminist movement -- they did all the legwork and now we're going to try to be parents and successful business people and great wives and good friends and take a cooking class and blah, blah, blah ...

The firsts go away - first love, first kiss, first baby. You have to create new ones.

Often I'll go to the market, and women will say to me: "Let me see your shoes." And then I show them I'm wearing flip-flops.

I love the smell of diapers; I even like when they're wet and you smell them all warm liked a baked good. Love it.

The arts were a big part of my childhood. We went to the theatre and opera a lot as a family. We were not at all wealthy, but it was at a time when the arts were publicly funded and there were free tickets available. For someone like myself who wasn't that academically inclined, it was a great escape.

The great challenge for me is to be all things to all people; I want to be a great mother, and I want to feel good when I'm at work.

Every once in awhile, a girl has to indulge herself.

A knockoff is not as easy to spot when it comes to love.

I know that he, Matthew Broderick, doesn't have his laundry done, and that he hasn't had a hot meal in days. That stuff weighs on my mind.

I got to thinking about relationships and partial lobotomies. Two seemingly different ideas that might just be perfect together - like chocolate and peanut butter....

Do we need distance to get close?

Men who are too good looking are never good in bed because they never had to be.

I really love eating, so I love reading about food, and I religiously read the dining section in newspapers.

I have a fantastic husband. Here's the honeymoon part: I still think he's the funniest, wittiest, most clever man I've ever known.

Read the editorial page of your local paper. It introduces you to opinion and can be terrifically provocative and perhaps a great motivating force for you to get involved in your community, regardless of your political ideology.

I'm thinking balls are to men, what purses are to women. It's just a little bag but we'd feel naked in public without it.

Work was never about wanting fame or money. I never thought about that. I loved getting the job, going to rehearsal, playing someone else, hanging around with a bunch of actors. I needed that, the way you need water.

If I didn't have kids, I would be at the theater or the ballet every single night of my life.

When it comes to life and love, why do we believe our worst reviews~?

I love, love, love being an actor - it's still the hardest and scariest thing I do, outside of parenting. But I've always been someone who likes a busy day.

Maybe our mistakes are what make our fate.

I remember when I came home from the hospital after having my son, I wore a Narciso Rodriguez black coat. Then, I was using this fragrance that I had created. I walk by that coat, and it still smells like that fragrance. It takes you right there.

I feel funny saying this, I'm not really a shoe shopper. I'm not going to go out and buy hundreds of pairs of shoes. I'm much more thoughtful than [Carrie] is, which is also one of the treats of playing her all these years.

I tell my friends married life is boring, but that's just a fun thing to say to make single people feel better.

Most of my friends in New York are single women or gay men.

A squirrel is just a rat with a cuter outfit!

Sunscreen! It is a recent discovery and now I can't live without it - that and drinking lots of water and moisturizing.

My involvement with UNICEF is particularly important to me because it is UNICEF that introduced me to volunteerism, thereby helping me to set my own personal standard of contributing my time and giving back to others. Working on behalf of UNICEF's lifesaving efforts is one of my most valued roles.

You can't do four movies and be good to everybody and be flying all night and shooting all day with a different wig and then be going to sing on Broadway without feeling a little tired. You endlessly feel you're letting somebody down.

You can't be friends with a squirrel! A squirrel is just a rat with a cuter outfit.

What you think you know versus what you actually learn.

I don't know how an actress is supposed to observe and create new stuff if she hasn't been on the streets, brushing up against humanity. You have to have a life.

I love Jennifer Hudson! She is so lovely on screen. She is so buoyant and youthful off screen as much as on.

I like my money right where I can see it... hanging in my closet.

My mother was a master juggler. If you ask her, she'll say she was a wreck. There's plenty of screaming that went on in the house, but I think it was necessary just to be heard. There were eight children!

Graham Norton makes me laugh. I love him. I'm not kidding. I watch him on BBC America every week. He's so fast.

We didn't have a lot when I was growing up, and it's the best thing that happened to me because I appreciate everything. I developed a strong work ethic, and I don't take anything for granted.

I expect I should be more calloused by now, but I am so sensitive about not ever living up to anybody's worst idea about an actor who is well-known.

If two people have only one thought between them, something is very wrong.

Can you really forgive if you can't forget?

I cringe inside when anybody gives me something. I don't know why. I just get embarrassed.

I wanted a family, but before I had a family, I was a career person. I've tried to marry those two things, and sometimes it is successful, and sometimes it is not.

~As a working mother high heels don't really fit into my life anymore - but in a totally wonderful way. I would much rather think about my son than myself.~

Can you make a mistake and miss your fate?

Come little children, I'll take thee away into a Land of Enchantment. Come little children, the time's come to play here in my Garden of Magic.

Fashion is not a luxury, it's a right

He's the funniest, smartest person I know. It doesn't mean he doesn't bug me and I'm sure I bug him sometimes.

I don't feel that my life, my professional life, is married to a reliance upon Instagram.

I don't know what I can do about the aging. Yes, I am aging. Oh my God, I'm aging all the time. It's like those flowers that wilt in front of you in time-lapse films. But what can I possibly do? Look like a lunatic?

I don't look to play people that are familiar. I look to play people that are different, challenge, unknown, foreign, and therefore scary.

I don't put pictures of my children on, rarely, I think I've done it twice? I'm thoughtful about that, because I don't think you can get it back, and I don't think it's fair to people to try to convey a desire to maintain some privacy and then share pictures and expect that somebody else won't want the same ability.

I don't think anybody should regret the choices they made in their twenties.

I eat everything. I'm just an eater. If it's free, I honestly eat everything.

I feel conflicted about my relationship with social media.

I feel honor-bound to have a private relationship with my children. And that's not a judgment about anybody else and what they choose. And that's the beauty of living in a democracy, right?

I find it so ironic that all you do, for the earliest part of your life, is try to be like everybody else. And then you turn 30, and you realize all you want to do is distinguish yourself in some way.

I knocked part of my tooth out with a scrubbing brush on stage whilst singing 'Hard Knock Life' in Annie.

I love walking into a closet and smelling lingering perfume, so I always spray my clothes. And at the end of the bottle, when the atomizer no longer reaches the tiny little dribble that is left, I unscrew the top and pour the remainder onto a t-shirt or dress.

I never wanted to be a celebrity; I never wanted to be famous. And in my daily life, I work really hard to not trade on it in any way. I am so desperately worried about anybody saying, "She cut in line," or "She took our table," or "She doesn't do her own grocery shopping." It's not like it's hard to be decent and respectful and well behaved. I do wait in line, and I do take the subway, and I do my own grocery shopping, and I do take the kids to school. But it almost doesn't matter to a certain segment of the populace.

I never was Carrie Bradshaw, but imagine how great it was to be told, "You are obligated to kiss all these men, to dress like that, and to carry on like that!" They were great guys, too.

I really love beautiful, well-made clothes. I don't shop [a lot], so I tend to have pieces for a long time. I like mixing vintage with newer designers.

I spent more time playing a person I was not than the person I am.

I strangely feel better before I go through hair and makeup. Maybe that's just because I feel like me.

I think it's incumbent upon me to try to be smart and make good choices and work with good people and work my ass off when I'm working with good people and I have to let everyone have their opinion afterwards. But this is what happens. You make a movie or you're on a show and then you have this experience and everyone tells you what you did. They tell you what you did. That's allowed. That's the experience of being human and subjectivity. That's it. We can only do what we'll do, and I can only do the best I can do.

I think people can find a breath and listen sometimes.

I think the things that are more painful to me are not the intrusion of paparazzi, it's the lack of civility that I find more intimidating and far more painful an experience. It's the lack of critical thinking. It's the endless snarky, mean way we talk about each other, we approach each other. The anonymity of being cruel, the delight in tearing people down. The tabloid era that we find ourselves in is a cultural boneyard, and that is painful to me.

I thought if I had straight hair and a perfect nose, my whole career would be different.

I took a page from [the playwright] Wendy Wasserstein's book. She said 'I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist.'

If you're a nice person and you work hard, you get to go shopping at Barneys. It's the decadent reward.

I'm a person who's been in a long-term relationship. It's not surprising that a lot of my friends - whether they're in same-sex relationships or not, whether they're married officially or just in a long-term relationship - have really interesting and various stages in their relationship. My life is looking at these friendships and saying, "Wait a minute, isn't this something really interesting? How can I explore this?"

I'm always nervous before a job! I always think I'm going to be fired, I always think I can't do it. I always think I'm going to disappoint somebody, myself included.

I'm aware of people's association with me and fashion and I certainly take that role on for some occasions, but it doesn't dominate my thoughts all the time.

I'm curious about everything, except what people have to say about me.

I'm not on Twitter. In theory, I really like Instagram. I think it's a warmer environment. I think, though conversations can erupt that aren't always friendly, you have an opportunity to jump in and redirect and even caution people against language and behavior that I personally object to.

It's a great challenge to be better than your opportunities.

It's like reading a book about a life that you will never occupy, but that's the beauty of being transported.

It's not that I'm using my life to put on screen or in my acting, it's that, when you're living in the world, you're exposed to stories, to people, to things that feel foreign and unfamiliar. And I'm curious about those things, me personally.