American Quotes

A lot of the reasons why something is a favorite thing are all things you don't necessarily see, the place, the people, the time, where you are, what it meant to you at the time.

People think that I changed my name. I could've been an actress, a superhero, or a stripper.

My dad liked how January went with Jones. My sisters' names are Jina and Jacey Jones.

'Mad Men' was really my first television role, and it never feels like TV to me. It's done at such a high level.

If I could do one thing over I'd have been nicer to my parents.

I wanted to be a meteorologist. I wanted to be a marine biologist.

I lived in a town of 400 until I was like nine or ten. My dad coached all the sports - he was a gym teacher and health teacher for grades K-12.

I have that thing in my stomach where I just need to keep striving for things. In my mind, I want the fairy tale.

I feel as though my career really hit its high point when I was cast as a supporting actress in 'American Wedding'. I thought the script had a lot of depth and intelligence, and it really just jumped off the page.

I choose roles that are not me.

Going to New York to do whatever - show business - it just seemed fun. It seemed fun to go to the big city and meet all kinds of different people and maybe be famous. It was just exciting. So I wasn't scared.

A lot of the stuff that I do with Betty is in the eyes. A lot of the feelings that I evoke with her are unspoken, so that's been fun to play with.

Why not show off if you've got something to show?

In this business, I don't know how you can have a plan or how you can orchestrate anything. But I've been lucky with my choices. I'm very strong-willed, so I've been able to stick with it. I'm lucky there.

If everything always went perfectly, I would feel like, When is the ball going to drop? Because good things don't always last. Maybe I'm a pessimistic person. When something just seems too good, I can't believe it.

Am I being typecast as a horrible person? I don't know. I don't think so. But if it happens, I'd rather get to play that, because there's nothing fun about being sweet. Sweet can be so boring, so I'd be happy staying away from that.

I was preparing myself for the theater, and... I got a little job here and a job there, but it wasn't going well, and I considered some time before the mid-60s that maybe I should consider something else.

I was as content Off-Broadway as I was in a big Hollywood movie, and, I just try to be content wherever I am, you know.

I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas.

I really think I ambled through a lot of my life, or ambled from one thing to the other.

I mean, my people were very, very simple. They were peasant people, you know?

I knew real show business from my father, who had been an actor since he left the world of boxing.

I happened to happened to land in a time, in the middle '60s, that without knowing it, and without being told by the history of theater - which we now see from a historical point of view was an explosive time.

I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.

Even during the rationing period, during World War II, we didn't have the anxiety that we'd starve, because we grew our own potatoes, you know? And our own hogs, and our own cows and stuff, you know.

Before my grandpa built his own church, we went to the neighboring town, and it was a white community. You know, up north, mostly middle European people and Indians, Chippewa Indians. We were welcome to that church, but once we got in, they didn't know what to do with us.

And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know.

And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.

And I think, on the other end, there were actors who were not as good as I was, perhaps who could have hung in too, but began to blame everything on race.

Acting is not about anything romantic, not even fantasy, although you do create fantasy.