“I have moments like that alot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it.”

Source: City of Fallen Angels

1960s, Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master (1961)

Black Boy (1945)

Context: I like digging into these characters that are a lot more complex, and there's a lot that isn't apparent on the surface … In a weird way, you can access all that fear and pain. … Nothing makes me happier than when somebody figures out I was in something, and then they'd seen me in something else, and had no idea it was the same person… Then I feel like I've done my job. … I've always loved finding characters that are not always the most likable ones when you first meet them, and finding a way to make them people that viewers will identify with, even against their better judgment.

As quoted in "Why Now Is a Divine Time for Alicia Witt", by Sarah Beauchamp at Huffington Post (30 May 2014) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-beauchamp/why-alicia-witt-should-be_b_5400673.html

Source: City of Bones

O interview (2003)
Context: I had been already trying to do Frida, but I would sit on my sorrows because it was so difficult. But now I was learning new things. And so I thought, this is what I want to do. I want to do one movie that if I die the next day, I know I left one thing in this world that I was very proud of, that other people can see, that meant something to me, that had my voice. Because God forbid I die tomorrow, I'm the bombshell for the rest of my existence. … Then I became very angry I said, I have become what they decided I am. When did I fall in this trap? Somebody decided I was this, and I became that. And I said, "I'm going to change it now. I'm going to define myself."

Part 1, Chapter 4 (p. 28)
Don't Bite the Sun (1976)

Source: The Lover's Dictionary