Reese Witherspoon Quotes

It's important to do things that scare you to death!

It's funny that it all becomes about clothes. It's bizarre. You work your butt off and then you win an award and it's all about your dress. You can't get away from it.

I traveled all over the South looking for factories - to keep production in the South. I wanted to give back to the place and people that raised me.

I love to sing around the house and in the car, but my daughter hates it.

I don't believe in perfection. I don't think there is such a thing.

I feel very blessed to have two wonderful, healthy children who keep me completely grounded, sane and throw up on my shoes just before I go to an awards show just so I know to keep it real.

I started working on trying to sound like June from the very beginning.

I take the kids to church and Sunday school. They love it. I really think it's important for a child to feel that there are things that are bigger than your life out there.

It definitely sometimes feels like a suit that I wish I could zip off. But I don't feel bad about any of the things I've gone through, whether it's divorce or breakups or anything like that, because that's all part of the life journey, and I have those experiences just like anyone else. And I think it deepens what you tap into creatively.

I'm not a politician, She says evenly. If I want to be one, I'll run for office. Susan Sarandon, whom I know and love, is a fantastic actress. It's her right as an American to say whatever she wants. [But] just because you're rich and famous doesn't qualify you to make political statements. I don't put my opinions out there to influence people. You have alot of influence. And sometimes I feel it's undeserved influence.

No one can sing like June Carter so I just tried to sing my very best.

Life isn't about perfection. There is no rule book. Life has many different chapters, and every chapter deserves celebrating.

I have a good memory for certain things. And a very short memory for painful things - that's my favorite Martha Stewart quote, by the way.

I was always, as a younger actress, very conscious of not wanting to act sexy. I didn't see myself like that. But I think as a woman, you get older, you feel more confident in your sexuality. You're not as intimidated by it, not as embarrassed by it.

Well I always wanted to be Dolly Parton when I was a little girl. I was obsessed with her.

To be courageous , you have to have an army of people holding you.

Now, this is my little public service announcement: If you get invited to something, it's incumbent upon you to RSVP as soon as possible. A quick "no" is better than a long "maybe." People go to a lot of trouble to plan a party, and it's a big deal to open up your home. What's more, it's essential to show up if you say you will. I have a busy life, but I still don't cancel unless it's a superduper emergency – I'm talking hospital-visit, in-the-newspapers-the-next-day emergency. Being tired just isn't a good enough excuse. C'mon! Make an effort!

One trick I use to determine whether or not to say yes to an invite is: Would I want to go right then and there? If the party were that second, would I get dressed and rush out of the house to go to the party? If the answer is yes, I probably do want to go, but if the answer is no, I don't accept the invitation.

I had parents who believed I could do anything - and I know how that made me feel. I think both my parents, having careers in the medical profession, feel they are helping people on a daily basis, and that was inculcated in me as a value. I had to struggle with giving up the idea of becoming a doctor myself.

When you finally accept that you're a complete dork, your life gets easier. No sense in trying to be cool.

I have a history, a long history of being stereotyped as a five-foot-two woman, which is very limiting. I've worked so hard to create characters that have dignity. And I think everybody knows that I have a very pro-woman message in my work - and in my life.

We're more than just our dresses.

The truth is ... I gave my heart away a long time ago, my whole heart ... and I never really got it back.

I'd always ask my grandma, who was so, so smart, why she didn't work, and she would explain that her parents didn't approve of her working after she had children. She didn't feel like she had choices.

Confidence is everything in this business.

I thought I was going to go back to Stanford, and then I got Election. I loved being an actor.

I always let my husband read the script so he knows what's about to happen to his wife. When I played Cheryl Strayed in Wild, I'd get really mad about certain things, I'd say really profound things, and I'd curse out of nowhere. He'd say, "Are you you, or are you Cheryl?"

Sexuality and femininity is an accumulation of age and wisdom and comfort in your own skin.

Everybody needs love. Everyone deserves it.

I'm encouraging these women, like Cheryl Strayed, to take the jump to writing for the screen. She is adapting her book Tiny Beautiful Things for us. They're infinitely capable of tackling the format.

My sheets are monogrammed, so is my silverware and pretty much everything else I own. My rule is, if it's not moving
monogram it!

Is it more fascinating, perplexing, unbelievable that women are entrepreneurs?

My kids make me laugh every day. And they're so supportive. As I get older, they understand those things I worried about - the guilt of being gone - in a way that's so healing for me, when they say, "Mom, we know you love what you do. We love to watch you do what you do."

Lord knows, every day is not a success, every year is not a success. You have to celebrate the good.

I literally think I look bad in every picture.

I grew up in Tennessee. We didn't know what Louis Vuitton was. I had to order all my prom outfits out of catalogs.

One hundred percent my mother, who would always say, "If you want something done, do it yourself." She must have said that 100 times to me - as a child, as a young woman, yesterday on the phone.

I don't have a lot of physical comedy instincts. I'm more verbal.

I'm just chatty. But I do express my opinion.

One honest voice is louder than a crowd.

I got a role in this movie called Freeway playing this really angry, aggressive, violent young woman who believed wholeheartedly in the truth. I had such satisfaction afterward, and I thought, That's what I want to do.

Your body is just a vessel for who you are as a person. And until you work on what you give back to the world, it doesn't matter what you look like on the outside.

People seem to really enjoy laughing at me.

I think it's really interesting to play a woman who can articulate that she isn't ready to have a family and isn't even sure if she wants a family. I have a lot of friends like that. But obviously, that's not me.

When people get in your face and say, 'This will pass,' you think, 'Are they crazy? I'm never gonna feel any better than I feel right this minute and nothing's ever gonna make sense again.' You see a lot of people play this blame game. Blame, blame, blame. You know? And it's a really easy thing to do, and I'm certainly guilty of it. [You have to] look at yourself and go, 'What part of this do I need to own? Which part of this is my responsibility?' And that's the painful work that you have to go through to hopefully get some real life knowledge out of it.

We each own one car, and we have a reasonable house. It's a lovely place to be, but it's not extravagant.

I really wanted to be a Broadway kid.

A [news] magazine printed a [photo-illustration] of me in a ball gown holding a vacuum cleaner, saying I started a company. Last time I checked, I'm not selling vacuums. It was very sexist.

Well I had my kids so young that I kind of feel that I'm a kid too and am growing up with them. The things they're interested in tend to really influence me.

For our first date, I made Ryan Hamburger Helper, which is basically what I grew up on. I make my own version of it now, with macaroni and cheese and hamburger meat. And the kids - it's their favorite dinner.

But with the right kind of coaching and determination you can accomplish anything and the biggest accomplishment that I feel I got from the film was overcoming that fear.

And I want to say that my grandmother was one of the biggest inspirations in my life. She taught me how to be a real woman, to have strength and self-respect, and to never give those things away.

I like Yoga. I run. I go hiking. I'm very active. I like being outside.

Never miss an opportunity to just shut up.

This is a movement to say we're more than just our dresses ... It's hard being a woman in Hollywood or any industry.

I worry about my kids growing up and how the world might hurt them. But at the same time, I absolutely do not worry about them growing up - because they have great values and a great sense of self.

If you are not yelling at your kids,you are not spending enough time with them.

Growing up in the South, it was very patriarchal. When I applied to Stanford, I was told by a [male] college counselor, "You're never gonna get in, don't bother. They don't want you." I said, "I'm going to try." And I got in! But I wouldn't be the woman I am if I hadn't had that conflict to overcome. It has given me an underdog feeling all my life.

My ex-husband is very involved in raising our beautiful children. We're very lucky because we both grew up in working families in middle America. We're on the same page that way.

I don't think these women are stupid. I think they're selling a personality that's very marketable: Wouldn't it be fun if we were all gorgeous and didn't have a care? But creating a cultural icon out of someone who goes, I'm stupid, isn't it cute? makes me want to throw daggers at them! I want to say to them, My grandma did not fight for what she fought for, and my mother did not fight for what she fought for, so you can start telling women it's fun to be stupid. Saying that to young women, little girls, my daughter? It's not OK.

You hope you're saying the right things - but also, as a kid becomes a teenager, you feel like there's a ticking clock for you to tell them everything they need to know.

I would love to have more kids. Kids are the best part of my day. I don't wake up to make movies. I wake up to hang out with my family.

To play June, I had an immediate connect with her background and culture. We grew up with the same religion and shared a lot of the same values of family and spirituality. But I was really so inspired by what a modern woman she was.

I'm losing friendships over forgetting to get back to people. But you can't keep up with everything. I've got a 13-year-old, a nine-year-old and a baby.

Somebody close to me once said, 'Oh, no man will ever accept your children.' And I just thought it was the most horrifying thing someone has ever said to me in my entire life. I was determined to find somebody who would make that not true.

My whole drive to be an actor was finding roles that I really believed represent modern women, the struggles that we deal with. Women who are strong and capable and in control of their own lives.

I'm trying to make it cool to be a good girl.

I don't think I realised how stressed I was, being a single parent. It was really, really stressful. It's not easy on anybody.

Finding pleasure at home-whether in a family dinner or a book club or a backyard barbecue-can give us the strength to go out into the world and do incredible things.

Men rise through the ranks because of potential, but women have to prove themselves - while trying to have children and having no family leave.

It really bothers me when people don't use coasters. Particularly on my table.

The more respect I had for myself, and the more I took care of myself, the more I understood what I needed out of a partner.

You won't meet a friend sitting on your couch.

Robert Pattinson loves to read and watch old movies and he's very smart.

Everything I sang sounded awful. So I went outside and I screamed. Everyone pretty much agreed it was awful.

Exploring female rage on film doesn't frighten me - it might frighten a lot of people in my business, but, gosh, I know a lot about that, from personal experience and friends' experiences.

You may be the first person who turns on a light in a dark room.

I spent a lot of my 20s just trying to make other people happy, rather than trying to figure out if doing that made me happy.

I like my body so much better after I had kids. Is that a crazy thing to say? I'm more womanly. I feel sexier.

I mean, really: He called me 33 percent lesbian, which was a gross underestimation of my lesbian-ness.

I clearly had one drink too many and I am deeply embarrassed about the things I said,

Even people that know Johnny Cash's music really well and know that he was married don't really know that much about June Carter. So finding out about her really helped to inform my performance and to bring her to the front in a way that she has never been before.

Women want to see the truth. They don't want to see some perfect girl.

Many people worry so much about managing their careers, but rarely spend half that much energy managing their LIVES. I want to make my life, not just my job, the best it can be. The rest will work itself out.

That said, my kids are at home right now with my husband and I'm missing something important at my daughter's school which makes me feel sick inside. It's a lot of balance and a lot of really hard decision making.

My husband is my biggest supporter on earth. He encourages me to put myself out in the world in ways that feel scary, and he's like, "I'm always gonna catch you. I'm always gonna be there for you." My supportive mother and family. Honey, it's such a village.