It`s pretty much the best original screenplay I`ve ever read, for a start. Then there`s the team - they`re a fantastic group of people.

So we had this moment with the fly, and we all thought: `Well, you can`t hope to direct a fly. If it walks around a bit, that will be enough.`

I wasn`t around when Nic was playing Donald. I was around with Charlie.

I sometimes think I was always left-wing. I know that sounds completely crazy, but I do know that I asked questions when I was about four, and I remember noticing that I wasn`t getting an answer, and I remember it annoying me. Like why when we went to church on Sunday were we sitting upstairs and the people we`d been playing with the day before were sitting downstairs. And I noticed that my brothers were not asking these questions. I was aware that I was being embarrassing.

She`s not a talker, or an intellectual, and she`s a woman at a certain stage of her life who`s already made a certain amount of choices.

True, there is all sorts of religious extremism all over the place, but the reason for this partly has to do with the fascist attitudes and language of absolutism coming from Washington. It`s challenging for people outside of America that Bush was re-elected. It means we`re all going to have to work a lot harder to understand what so many more Americans than we thought really want. It`s an identity shift in our minds about America and maybe for many Americans as well.

I think I enjoy my work now even more simply because it`s even easier than it was. It sounds sacrilegious to say that anything`s a delight when you`re away from your children, but the truth is that it is refreshing to only have yourself to dress in the morning, and to lie diagonally across the bed. Making films, going round the world on tour - all these crazy things that were so difficult before are so much easier than breastfeeding twins for 14 months that frankly it is a delight.

Faith is in the eye of the beholder.

I knew Spike Jonze would do something really interesting with it.

In order for the story to move forward, the character has to do certain things. You don`t have to be anything but interested in telling the story.

I`ve been on the other side of the table many times, trying to get people to be sympathetic to projects, and I`ve been the victim of that kind of intense kindness masking extreme stupidity.

It was an amazing performer. Very temperamental, it spent a lot of time in its trailer.

Nic`s Charlie is something very particular. You can`t really put them together. It`s a phantasm.

What he`s done is recognise the cinematic nature of the book. It`s beautifully realised - it`s a beat film.

I felt clearly that the atmosphere of the film is about loneliness, and existentialist loneliness - in all the characters, including my own.

It may be unfair of me but I do feel I know it.

I really just had a reverse Zoolander (2001) moment when I think I heard someone else`s name and suddenly slowly heard my own. I`m still recovering from that moment, and I have absolutely no idea what happened after that. So, you know, you can tell me my dress fell off and I`d believe you, so don`t be cruel. - on winning the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award

I always think of the word `abandonment` when I think of the character.

[On how she believes Derek Jarman would have reacted to her winning an Oscar] I think he would have laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed... And then, he would ask me for the thing to melt it down into an artwork.

[On the Oscar statuette] I have an American agent who is the spitting image of this. Really truly, the same shape head and, it has to be said, the buttocks.

I am a soldier. I live a soldier`s life when I`m working. That`s how it feels to me, except I`ve got a slightly greater chance of survival.

I don`t love the theatre. I`m just not one of them.

You`re always playing yourself. It`s all autobiography, whatever you`re doing. It`s using them as a kind of prism through which to throw something real about yourself, or something relaxed at least. Because the last thing you want is to look like you`re acting.

There`s such an effort to try and explain people.

I don`t work the future - I don`t want to know what`s coming. I don`t feel I need any guarantees.

There is something insane about a lack of doubt. Doubt, to me anyway, is what makes you human, and without doubt even the righteous lose their grip not only on reality but also on their humanity.

I`m basically interested in identity, and I still find fascinating the question, "How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people`s expectations for our identity?"

The other day, I was going through the airport security and I was searched by a male security guard. I`m very often referred to as "Sir" in elevators and such. I think it has to do with being this tall and not wearing much lipstick. I think people just can`t imagine I`d be a woman if I look like this.