I really want women to throw their shoulders back and stand up straight and use their big girl voices and not feel like they're compromising their femininity to be strong and smart.

I have always had this secret fantasy of being a Bourne girl or Bond girl, and I've never even gotten called in on one of those roles.

Okay, sense of humor: plus one. Being able to laugh at yourself: plus one. Being able to laugh at other people without being mean: plus one. Vanity: minus one.

If the opportunities are not being presented to me, I'm going to take the reins and do it. Brit Marling was not waiting for the phone to ring. The great roles are not there to be had. If you have an idea, do it.

You have to find a man that's going to respect you. With my husband, I tell him all the time the fact that he grew up in a home with his mom and his dad and they were married until he was grown made him have certain values and certain respect for me.

I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life.

I was working with C. L. R. James; I believed in Marxist ideas about the labor and movement and the workers being the secret to the future. And I learned differently just by being in Detroit and being married to Jimmy Boggs.

I wrote that song 'Black,' and it was just this idea that I had been married for 10 years. Everyone talks about 'happily ever after,' but there's so much more to it than that.