Sissy Spacek

I loved growing up in a little town. I loved knowing people. I loved going to the store and running into people. I loved going into the store and having forgotten my bag, saying, 'Charge it, put it on my bill.' I loved going to the gas station and saying, 'Pete, fill it up.' I loved that continuity of life.

I hated country music growing up, but it gets in your bone marrow, kind of like a disease.

Texas is so big, and the place where I grew up was so little, and I was such a little thing growing up in the middle of it. I had two choices: I could either spend my life feeling insignificant, or I could look on the life I lived as a microcosm of the universe.

Jingle taps on the majorette boots were an important part of a little girl growing up in the South.

Hollywood is a film industry, a film business. I don't approach my career in that way. I see it as 'art,' and I become involved in films that ring my bell.

Everybody who loves me calls me Sissy, so I guess that's just who I am. When I'm 80, they'll still be calling me Sissy. Oh, well, I guess there are worse things.

Hollywood is like a piranha. They don't give you breathing room. You don't have time to let your career breathe.

I write about Texas, New York, California and Virginia, and they're all important places in my repertoire.

I didn't worry about leaving the fast lane - I was just so consumed with my baby that it seemed like the right thing to do. I never felt like I left New York, though. If you've lived in a place and loved it, you never feel like you left it.

I used to play softball every summer back in Quitman. My two brothers demanded I be tough. There were certain girls they wouldn't let me invite over because they were too feminine and fragile.

When I lived in New York City, I loved it so much. But every six months, I had to go home to Texas to remember who I was. Get filled back up.

I think people in the north and the south and the east and the west, anywhere they come from, are just as interesting, and they're humans. They have the same realm of emotions that we all have. But I'm just more drawn to the Southern character and the different types, and Southern literature is so lyrical and so wonderful.