“There's a tremendous difference between alone and lonely. You could be lonely in a group of people. I like being alone. I like eating by myself. I go home at night and just watch a movie or hang out with my dog. I have to exert myself and really say, oh God, I've got to see my friends 'cause I'm too content being by myself.”
“My therapist says I still haven't got in touch with my anger. Maybe one day I'm going to explode. But I'm still really happy. I know it looks like a strange and painful upbringing - all those experiences led me to the paths that I'm on now.”
“Becoming emancipated at 14, my life wasn't normal. I didn't have to go to school, so I didn't. I was rebellious by nature. I spent my 20s focusing on my company, Flower Films, and producing movies. Now that I'm almost 30, I would like to try other things in lie. I'm crazy about photography, and I want to take an art history class.”
“I'm so in control of my life, you shouldn't dislike anything I do-because I'm not only in the best place I've ever been, but it keeps getting better and better.”
“The low points I had all helped make up my character, so I probably wouldn't want to do away with them because I like being flawed and I like having them help me grow and change and become better and stronger.”
“I remember being on film sets when I was younger, and only men got to do the cool action movies. So I thought, 'Maybe I'll get to produce one day and get to do cool stuff too,' which is what happened when we did 'Charlie's Angels.' Starting my production company was a big turning point for me.”
“Great dad. Yeah, he would ask me for money on birthdays and, you know, inappropriate times. And I just wrote him off like, 'You're not a father.' I just learned you cannot emotionally invest in people who are not attainable.”
“I'm a total control freak and love to participate in the design of every single aspect of life.”
“I've always said that one night, I'm going to find myself in some field somewhere, I'm standing on grass, and it's raining, and I'm with the person I love, and I know I'm at the very point I've been dreaming of getting to.”
“I'd definitely be the kind of parent who enabled my child's dreams. I'd just watch and nurture and guide them. I have the blueprints of what not to do... I think I'd be a good parent, actually.”
“Being a Barrymore didn't help me, other than giving me a great sense of pride and a strange spiritual sense that I felt OK about having the passion to act. It made sense because my whole family had done it and it helped rationalise it for me.”
“I grew up in a family that was multifaceted, sexually oriented, and pretty much open to everything. And because I was working, my friends were all adults. I had a tough time going to different schools because people knew me from films and I was the fat child who got beaten up every day.”
“I really have created a family. I work with the people I love, I travel with them, I make films with them, and I'm in an office with them. So in a weird way - I know I haven't birthed a child - I feel that I'm a part of creating a family. It's a tribe. I love that word.”
“When I did 'E.T.,' it sort of solidified the only family I know are these film crews. These gypsies. These filmmakers. That was the solidification and the clicking revelations of 'This is what I want to do with my life and this is where I'm going to survive.'”
“When you're young, you're always wondering when you're actually going to feel like a grownup. And I think you probably fear it, in a sense, too. There's a danger to feeling like an adult... like this whimsical kid in you is going to die or something. And then all of a sudden, one day you kind of feel like an adult and it's really nice.”
“I love inventive food, but I want the classic dishes to taste like how I remember them. I get a little bummed out when there is too much fancy stuff going on and it doesn't resemble the original dish at all.”
“The people I grew up around who I really liked were quick on the draw. It always just wowed me. And my mum would make weird funny comments. I can see in myself her self-deprecating, hippie humour. I can't take myself too seriously.”
“The stories that I want to tell, especially as a director, don't necessarily have a perfect ending because, the older you get, the more you appreciate a good day versus a happy ending. You understand that life continues on the next day the reality of things is what happens tomorrow.”
“Producing is so exciting because you can enable things to happen, whether it's like discovering a filmmaker who you're taking a chance on, protecting a battle and driving home at the end of the day just going, 'I'm so glad I stayed late at work and fought hard for that. Had my passion. Won that battle.'”
“If you're going to go through hell... I suggest you come back learning something.”
“It's only through listening that you learn, and I never want to stop learning.”
“I'm just learning who I am and how relationships work and how to make them function. No different from anyone else.”
“Life is very interesting... in the end, some of your greatest pains, become your greatest strengths.”
“I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.”
“You can't live your life blaming your failures on your parents and what they did or didn't do for you. You're dealt the cards that you're dealt. I realised it was a waste of time to be angry at my parents and feel sorry for myself.”
“Love is the hardest habit to break, and the most difficult to satisfy.”
“I love romance. I'm a sucker for it. I love it so much. It's pathetic.”
“Sometimes I bust out and do things so permanent. Like tattoos and marriage.”
“I still, at hotel rooms, I do this one sort of not-so-cool thing: continually shoving my room service tray in front of someone else's door. Because I don't want the remnants. I don't want to be caught, like, being like the pig that I was at two in the morning.”
“I'm not after fame and success and fortune and power. It's mostly that I want to have a good job and have good friends that's the good stuff in life.”
“I don't mind a little Sturm und Drang. When I was doing 'Riding in Cars With Boys,' I wouldn't smile at anybody, because my character, Bev, was angry at the world. I'm the opposite. Inside my head I'd be like, God, I'll explain to you at the end of shooting that I'm not this person.”
“Whether you're throwing up or breaking up, you want your girlfriend right there! I don't trust women who don't go to their girlfriends.”
“At 35, I'm definitely starting to feel more like a grown-up than I ever have. There's nothing in my life that is childish or whimsical. Having fun is fantastic and I never want to lose a sense of that - and also, I think, you have to have that to put into your work or else it's going to feel stiff.”