Quotes

Alyssa's favorite saying is "It's nice to be important, but it's important to always be nice."

Every time I decide I want a child I get another pet. I have 3 dogs, 13 birds and 3 horses, what does that tell you?

I've always believed in experiencing everything in life. When you walk out with blinders on, you cut yourself off from the angels and the fairies.

We were in Brooklyn and we stopped by a neighbor's house ... there were these dogs there and I guess they had puppies, she was going to keep one but said she may have to put the rest to sleep if she couldn't find homes for them, so if we knew anyone that wanted puppies to let her know. I asked what she meant by "putting them to sleep", so I asked and my mom being as subtle as possible said it means they are going to kill them. So we took home one named Pluto.

Animals, they are one of the most beautiful gifts we have and, you know, if there are people that have compassion, there are very few people that put their money into animal rescue organizations. And if there is someone that has that passion, animals need all the help they can get.

"I turned vegetarian after 9/11. A friend of mine came back from New York and said that he couldn't stand the smell of burnt flesh. It immediately reminded me of a barbecue." - On her decision to become a vegetarian.

I'm a big believer in individual responsibility.

First, accept sadness. Realize that without losing, winning isn't so great.

I had to deal with a certain amount of guilt that accompanied being successful at a young age. The guilt that my parents gave up their dreams, friendships, and the only life they knew to make *my* triumphs a possibility. The guilt that my brother had to deal with having a famous sister. It was not easy, but thank God I had them to remind me what is important in life.

Baseball is, in many ways, like a boyfriend or spouse. You can love him, you *should* love him, but you need to learn that he exists without you, and you without him. You need to learn the same thing about baseball, that as much as you care, you need to be able to step back.

In my book, the number-one sign that you're all grown up is when your baby brother's giving YOU piggyback rides!

[open letter] Dear Matt Damon, It's the micro that makes the macro. We are in a 'culture of outrage' because the magnitude of rage is, in fact, overtly outrageous. And it is righteous. I have been a victim of each component of the sexual assault spectrum of which you speak. They all hurt. And they are all connected to a patriarchy intertwined with normalized, accepted - even welcomed - misogyny. We are not outraged because someone grabbed our asses in a picture. We are outraged because we were made to feel this was normal. We are outraged because we have been gaslighted. We are outraged because we were silenced for so long. Sexual harassment, misconduct, assault and violence is a systemic disease. The tumor is being cut out right now with no anesthesia. Please send flowers. [Dec. 2017]

If you've been sexually harassed or assaulted, write "Me Too".

[on continuing to deal with symptoms months after her COVID-19 diagnosis]There are still lingering effects, like I still have shortness of breath. I still have heart palpitations. I have, like, a high-pitched noise in my ear. My hair is falling out.

My very first date was with Kirk Cameron. I was 13. His mom picked me up at my parents house and dropped us off at Stanley's in Sherman Oaks. He wore too much cologne.

[In regards to her nude photos published by Bikini magazine] I didn't pose nude for Bikini. I posed nude for a coffee-table book about celebrities and their tattoos, and the money was going to go to pediatric AIDS. But the book never came out and the photographer sold the pictures to Bikini without telling me. I could do nothing because the photographer owned the rights to the pictures.

[on working with John Gielgud on The Canterville Ghost (1986) ]: He was eighty when we shot that movie and he had these huge monologues that he would remember and I asked him how he would remember his lines - I was maybe twelve - and he said, "I simply write them down." And, that was such a cool tool because not only does it help you to remember but it helps you make the dialogue more your own.

I grew up very differently from most Americans. From about as young an age as I can remember, I was working. I'm forty-eight years old , and I've had a forty-year career. I almost never went to a normal school - my schools were tutors on sets between takes. I had to learn most of what I know through my own curiosity, my own fuckups, and my own drive to be better. Because the world is strange, I've been a millionaire since I was nineteen, and I know that gives me a skewed perspective on the world. But I also know it doesn't make me any better than any other person.

[about the birth of her son Milo] One thing they don't teach in birthing classes is the most invasive thing that exists on the planet happens when you have a baby: EVERYBODY has access to your vagina. Doctors and nurses come on in and touch your cervix. People you love are there with cameras to film the whole process.