I think an artist`s responsibility is more complex than people realize.

Actors become actors because they loved entertaining their family by putting on the lampshade and dancing around as a kid, ... That`s not my personality. For me, the fun part of making movies is seeing it as a director sees it. I like the architecture of movies. I like knowing what`s coming and working to set that up.

On her role as the child prostitute Iris in Taxi Driver (1976): "I spent four hours with a shrink to prove that I was normal enough to play a hooker. It was the role that changed my life. For the first time I played something completely different. But I knew the character I had to play - I grew up three blocks away from Hollywood Boulevard and saw prostitutes like Iris every day."

[Criticizing the film adaptation of Sin City (2005)]: That was so painfully cartoonish I was offended. I don`t know how you enjoy or laugh about a child abduction and molestation. What part of that sentence is funny? I can`t get beyond that. I don`t know if everyone understands the impact of that movie`s message.

On backing Mel Gibson after his 2006 anti-Semitic comments to a cop while drunk: Is he an anti-Semite? Absolutely not. But, it`s no secret that he has always fought a terrible battle with alcoholism. [Mel] was a shining example of how low you can go when you are young and still pull yourself up. He took his recovery very seriously, which is why I know he is strong enough to get through this now.

On Taxi Driver (1976): "I think it`s one of the finest films that`s ever been made in America. It`s a statement about America. About violence. About loneliness. Anonymity. Some of the best works are those that have tried to imitate that kind of film, that kind of style. It`s just a classic. I felt when I came home every day that I had really accomplished something."

On the making of Taxi Driver (1976): "You rarely have a director like Martin Scorsese or a co-star like Robert De Niro, who rehearses and rehearses until you get the feeling that for the time you`re with him he is the character. It`s so real it`s frightening."

On the making of Taxi Driver (1976): "There was a welfare worker on the set every day and she saw the daily rushes of all my scenes and made sure I wasn`t on set when Robert De Niro said a dirty word."

On her role as the child prostitute Iris in Taxi Driver (1976): "At first I didn`t want to do the part, but only because I was afraid my friends would tease me afterwards. I thought, wow, they`ve got to be kidding. It was a great part for a 21-year old, but I couldn`t believe that they were offering it to me. I was the Disney kid."

As time goes on, I will play characters who get older: I don`t want to be some Botoxed weirdo.

Motherhood doesn`t mean I don`t have a creative side that I need to nourish. It doesn`t mean I don`t have independence from them. I`d be a crazy person if I didn`t.

I`ve learned something in the last few years that I really didn`t know about myself as an actor. I basically learned how to stay happy. It`s important for me to be happy working or I feel resentful. I don`t like it. I hate myself. What I know now is that I really need to love the director. I need him to be a good parent. And then I will lie down on the train tracks for him and go to the ends of the earth for him.

"I`m lucky that people do leave me alone. I`m not Madonna. The red carpet is work for me. I work from 9-to-5 and when I get home, I don`t want to go back to work by going to an industry event. For me, putting on makeup and a fancy dress is work".

I`m nervous every day on a film set. The anxiety of performance is not like anything else because you never know if you`ll get there or not. There is an anxiety when it comes to finding the truth.

What I didn`t realize is how completely consumed I would be by my sons. I didn`t know that the rest of my life would become so little a priority.

I love to see theater but not to work in it. Too messy, and I have a bit of an inferiority complex.

Acting, for me, is exhausting. I`m always more energized by directing. It`s more intense to direct. I can pop in and express myself, then pop out again. It`s a huge passion for me.

I`m interested in directing movies about situations that I`ve lived, so they are almost a personal essay about what I`ve come to believe in.

On devoting more time to parenting her sons than film work: "There`s something so pure about the ways boys love you."

On "Foster Child", her brother Buddy Foster`s unauthorized biography about her: "A cheap cry for attention and money filled with hazy recollections, fantasies and borrowed press releases. Buddy has done nothing but break our mother`s heart his whole life."

If I fail, at least I will have failed my way.

On the advantages of being an actress who is months from turning 40: "They`ve lived longer, they`re more confident about their choices and they don`t have to be hip and cool anymore, which I think is a godsend - you make really bad choices when you are trying to be hip." -- April 2004

"Kids talk like sailors now. Adults don`t want to know." -- at age 14.

I could tell you the criticism backward and forward about Little Man Tate (1991). But it didn`t bother me as long as they were talking about the work and not about `she has fat thighs` or something. But I fared really well with `Tate,` so I shouldn`t be complaining.

It`s not my personality to be extroverted emotionally, so acting has been helpful to me.

Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it`s not acceptable.

Normal is not something to aspire to, it`s something to get away from.

On her role in Taxi Driver (1976), when she was 13: "I spent four hours with a shrink trying to prove I was normal enough to play a hooker. Does that make sense?"

Being understood is not the most essential thing in life.