MICHELLE WILLIAMS

I was born with a fierce need for independence.

I don't believe that life is linear. I think of it as circles - concentric circles that connect.

Grief is like a moving river, so that's what I mean by it's always changing. It's a strange thing to say because I'm at heart an optimistic person, but I would say in some ways it just gets worse. It's just that the more time that passes, the more you miss someone.

I like to do weird things in the shower, like drink my coffee, brush my teeth and drink a smoothie. It's good time management.

Everything's connected, and everything has meaning if you look for it.

It felt as if things were literally slipping through my fingers. Things were just streaming away from me. I lost my sense of humor. I'm still looking for that.

The idea that you can get everything you want in one person is destructive, and maybe when you accept that the number is closer to 50 or 60 or 70 percent, that's when you can start to make some progress in choosing the right person.

I want a happy life.

I started acting as a child in Community Theatre but I didn't do any serious stuff. It was all musicals like 'Annie' and 'Wizard of Oz.' I was always in the chorus.

For me, relationships are the real action movies. Bombs are exploding every day and the kitchen is Ground Zero.

I'm not lonely, and I think that has a lot to do with what's on my bedside table rather than what's in my bed.

I don't know what 15-year-old doesn't have a desire to separate themselves from their parents and prove their independence.

I'm not a happy person when I'm working.

I've come to learn that the choices I labor over and go back and forth about and ask a million people for their opinions and make lists about... those are always the wrong choices.

I don't know what my version of a relationship or marriage is yet, because the typical model seems a little broken to me.

An interview is like a minefield.

I'm not going to rush anything and scamper around like a mad person and make myself crazy.

When my daughter asks, 'What do you do?', every movie I have a different answer. As she grows, she wants more explanations.

I had always been kind of obsessed with making a home of my own and was always drawing rooms that I wanted to live in, down to pictures on the wall and the faces that would be in the photographs, and how the couches would be situated.

Maybe it has something to do with turning 30. I don't feel as shy or nervous or self-conscious. I have more confidence that I can handle what life brings me. I don't feel scared to have an idea and express it.

Every movie I make I find kind of excruciating. I get a lot back from it, but I feel like I'm kind of always working at the edge of my ability. I guess that's what I'm looking for when I go to work. I am trying to become the edge.

Even the simplest things, I'm guilty of making really bad decisions a lot of the time.

Whatever education I got was from experience and reading. But I also realize I wouldn't pass my friend's sixth-grade class.

Listen, I've always been very headstrong.

I did find my direction at an early age.