“My mother used to ask, 'Why do you always write such sad songs?' I don...” — Kathy Bates Quote

My mother used to ask, 'Why do you always write such sad songs?' I don't know if I was different from a lot of adolescents in that respect.

I got my SAG card quite unexpectedly. I was here in Los Angeles doing a play called 'Vanities' - it was 1976, I believe - and I got invited by Dustin Hoffman, whom I'd met in New York, to come audition for a movie he was directing.

I was never an ingenue. I've always just been a character actor. When I was younger, it was a real problem, because I was never pretty enough. It was hard, not just for the lack of work, but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.

Alexander Payne's very specific. His scripts are always complete when you start working on them.

The why of why we are here is an intrigue for adolescents; the how is what must command the living.

I'm shocked that sleep hygiene is not a global priority, and even more irate that my three children are expected to maintain school schedules that hinder adolescent development and contribute to mental illness.

Some distant day, anthropologists will consider as a landmark in humankind's evolution - comparable to the capacity for destroying ourselves by nuclear obliteration - the adolescent gene's newly emergent power to dictate nightly TV viewing.

It's possible that I've matured as a writer, and I hope I've matured emotionally, but I always find myself revisiting these adolescent scenes.