"Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents. They don't tell their real parents about that - you don't want to tell Mom and Dad. Kids lead a very private life. And I was a typical child, I think. I was a liar."

"I think people should be given a test much like driver's tests as to whether they're capable of being parents! It's an art form. I talk a lot. And I think a lot. And I draw a lot. But never in a million years would I have been a parent. That's just work that's too hard."

"I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth."

"What I do as best I can is out of a deep respect for children, for how difficult their world is."

"My dad was a militant atheist, or is a militant atheist. My mum was sort of bought up in a religious family because she was a Protestant from Ireland but wasn't especially religious."

"Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper."

"I came from a family where I felt great pressure to be financially successful, and I felt that staying in Chicago and doing theater, I was, in all likelihood, not going to find financial success."

"Mother Firefly is the kind of character I've always wanted to play. She's larger than life, terribly tragic, and capable of a lot of love."