Drew Barrymore

Kisses, even to the air, are beautiful.

Kissing - and I mean like yummy smacking kissing - is the most delicious, most beautiful and passionate thing that two people can do bar none. Better than sex hands down.

There's something liberating about not pretending. Dare to embarrass yourself. Risk.

It wasn't my choice to be an open book, but when people found out what my life was like when I was 14 or 15, I didn't deny it. I think the more imperfect you are the more human you are.

I don't want to be stinky poo poo girl, I want to be happy flower child.

Sometimes I bust out and do things so permanent. Like tattoos and marriage.

I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.

Whether you're throwing up or breaking up, you want your girlfriend right there! I don't trust women who don't go to their girlfriends.

It's the worst when you're kissing someone who's not a good kisser and you're trying to make it look good, but you feel like you're just working on your own.

God made a very obvious choice when he made me voluptuous, why would I go against what he decided for me? My limbs work so I'm not going to complain about the way my body is shaped.

I've been a vegetarian for years and years. I'm not judgemental about others who aren't I just feel I cannot eat or wear living creatures.

I aspire to be that to be a voice of reason one day.

Oh I would love to be a motivational speaker. I have pulled myself out of a million potholes and I can see the potholes ahead of me. That doesn't mean that I could always do that so perfectly for my own life. I totally fall in potholes.

When you're young you're always wondering when you're actually going to feel like a grownup. And I think you probably fear it in a sense too. There's a danger to feeling like an adult... like this whimsical kid in you is going to die or something. And then all of a sudden one day you kind of feel like an adult and it's really nice.

Producing is so exciting because you can enable things to happen whether it's like discovering a filmmaker who you're taking a chance on protecting a battle and driving home at the end of the day just going 'I'm so glad I stayed late at work and fought hard for that. Had my passion. Won that battle.'

I personally battled with my own body image for years. I used to tell myself You can't wear anything sleeveless or strapless. And all of a sudden I was like What if I just didn't send such negative messages to my brain and said wear it and enjoy it? And now I'm more comfortable in clothes than ever.

The stories that I want to tell, especially as a director, don't necessarily have a perfect ending, because the older you get the more you appreciate a good day versus a happy ending. You understand that life continues on the next day, the reality of things is what happens tomorrow.

Love is the hardest habit to break and the most difficult to satisfy.

I don't like camera trickery and editing and doubles and all of that.

I hate flatscreens. I don't want to see anything in that much pixilation. I don't need to see the pimple on someone's face. I love the world through glass. The more old dusty and tainted, that glass is the prettier and more impressionistic that is to me. I don't need to see everything perfectly. I don't like it.

I'm a carb queen. I'll always order macaroni and cheese but I don't want it to be fancy. I want it to be as close to Kraft Services as it can possibly get!

I'm just learning who I am and how relationships work and how to make them function. No different from anyone else.

I am obsessed with ice cubes. Obsessed.

I'm very sensitive to the English language. I studied the dictionary obsessively when I was a kid and collect old dictionaries. Words I think are very powerful and they convey an intention.

I mean I come from a hippie mentality where I just think to know someone you need to look into their eyes. Eyes are so important. Until they start melon-balling eyes out I won't be able to get to know someone another way.

The people I grew up around who I really liked were quick on the draw. It always just wowed me. And my mum would make weird funny comments. I can see in myself her self-deprecating hippie humour. I can't take myself too seriously.

Becoming emancipated at 14 my life wasn't normal. I didn't have to go to school so I didn't. I was rebellious by nature. I spent my 20s focusing on my company Flower Films and producing movies. Now that I'm almost 30 I would like to try other things in lie. I'm crazy about photography and I want to take an art history class.

I love romance. I'm a sucker for it. I love it so much. It's pathetic.

It's only through listening that you learn and I never want to stop learning.

You can't live your life blaming your failures on your parents and what they did or didn't do for you. You're dealt the cards that you're dealt. I realised it was a waste of time to be angry at my parents and feel sorry for myself.

I've produced and gotten to do a lot of optimistic love stories and that was so where I was at for 10 years in my life. And now I feel like Okay now I know how to do that. I want to get scared again, I want to feel the way I felt when I started my company when I started producing.

I never have been insecure because I see what a waste it is. I know there is a solution to insecurity. I don't tend to be thrown by problems that don't have solutions. And insecurity has a wealth of alternatives.

I still at hotel rooms I do this one sort of not-so-cool thing: continually shoving my room service tray in front of someone else's door. Because I don't want the remnants. I don't want to be caught like being like the pig that I was at two in the morning.

California is an unbelievable state. One day I might be in a spiritual place like Joshua Tree then before I know it I'm eating groovy sushi in a mini-mall. I'm a Cali girl through and through.

I never want to get to the point where it's all about my needs and the hell with anybody else.

I guess I do have a childlike sense of fun and although I still have my dark days I'm generally an optimistic person. The way things have gone in my life sure I could have been a bitter person. But I just find bitter people really un-fun you know? And who wants to be that person?

When I did 'E.T. ' it sort of solidified the only family I know are these film crews. These gypsies. These filmmakers. That was the solidification and the clicking revelations of 'This is what I want to do with my life and this is where I'm going to survive.'

When I lay my head on the pillow at night I can say I was a decent person today. That's when I feel beautiful.

If you're going to go through hell... I suggest you come back learning something.

I'm not after fame and success and fortune and power. It's mostly that I want to have a good job and have good friends, that's the good stuff in life.

I'd definitely be the kind of parent who enabled my child's dreams. I'd just watch and nurture and guide them. I have the blueprints of what not to do... I think I'd be a good parent actually.

I never act my characters - I am them.

I don't even have voice mail or answering machines anymore. I hate the phone and I don't want to call anybody back. If I go to hell it will be a small closet with a telephone in it and I will be doomed and destined for eternity to return phone calls.

You've just got to do the best that you can.

I love roller coasters that make my stomach drop. One ride in Las Vegas the Big Shot straps you into a row of seats and catapults you into the air from the top of the Stratosphere Tower - then plummets back down. I ride it over and over, it's exhilarating.

A fish may love a bird but where would they live?

I used to look in the mirror and feel shame I look in the mirror now and I absolutely love myself.

I really have created a family. I work with the people I love, I travel with them, I make films with them, and I'm in an office with them. So in a weird way - I know I haven't birthed a child - I feel that I'm a part of creating a family. It's a tribe. I love that word.

My mother and I split ways when I was very young and have never really reconciled.

Life is very interesting... in the end some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths.

I pray to be like the ocean with soft currents maybe waves at times. More and more I want the consistency rather than the highs and the lows.

I definitely don't think that I'm hot doo-doo. I don't.

I've always said that one night I'm going to find myself in some field somewhere I'm standing on grass and it's raining and I'm with the person I love and I know I'm at the very point I've been dreaming of getting to.

I don't mind a little Sturm und Drang. When I was doing 'Riding in Cars With Boys ' I wouldn't smile at anybody because my character Bev was angry at the world. I'm the opposite. Inside my head I'd be like God I'll explain to you at the end of shooting that I'm not this person.

If you're going to be alive and on this planet you have to like suck the marrow out of every day and get the most out of it.

I feel like I came out of the womb and was punted - there you go out in the world!

Everyone is like a butterfly they start out ugly and awkward and then morph into beautiful graceful butterflies that everyone loves.

Great dad. Yeah he would ask me for money on birthdays and you know inappropriate times. And I just wrote him off like 'You're not a father.' I just learned you cannot emotionally invest in people who are not attainable.

The low points I had all helped make up my character so I probably wouldn't want to do away with them because I like being flawed and I like having them help me grow and change and become better and stronger.

I don't know anybody's road who's been paved perfectly for them there are no manuals you don't know what life has in store for you.

I remember being on film sets when I was younger and only men got to do the cool action movies. So I thought 'Maybe I'll get to produce one day and get to do cool stuff too ' which is what happened when we did 'Charlie's Angels.' Starting my production company was a big turning point for me.

There's a hunger and a fervor that I have but there's no person I'm going to push to the side to get where I'm going. I want to create my own road.

I really want to understand the mind so I can be more comfortable with the way people are. Being comfortable with people is incredibly important.

It's not just about acting. I love film I'm a director now I love writing I love producing I love having a company that makes films and to be prolific and have a place to put all the ideas that are constantly bubbling up inside of me and that don't let me sleep at night.

My therapist says I still haven't got in touch with my anger. Maybe one day I'm going to explode. But I'm still really happy. I know it looks like a strange and painful upbringing - all those experiences led me to the paths that I'm on now.

I grew up in a family that was multifaceted sexually oriented and pretty much open to everything. And because I was working my friends were all adults. I had a tough time going to different schools because people knew me from films and I was the fat child who got beaten up every day.

My whole life I've wanted to feel comfortable in my skin. It's the most liberating thing in the world.

I'm so in control of my life you shouldn't dislike anything I do-because I'm not only in the best place I've ever been but it keeps getting better and better.

I feel like some of my baby fat is going away and that's not just physically, it's psychologically. I think that your body is in tune with your mind and your spirituality and your heart. If things are going better I just think you look better.

I want people to love me but it's not going to hurt me if they don't.

At 35 I'm definitely starting to feel more like a grown-up than I ever have. There's nothing in my life that is childish or whimsical. Having fun is fantastic and I never want to lose a sense of that - and also I think you have to have that to put into your work or else it's going to feel stiff.

There are a lot of us little gypsies out there that need to go and find another place you know. A safer healthier or just a different venue in order to develop and find ourselves. I am so lucky to live the life that I do.

A few years ago I bought an old red bicycle with the words 'Free Spirit' written across its side - which is exactly what I felt like when I rode it down the street in a tie-dyed dress.

Daisies are like sunshine to the ground.

I have always been fond of recognizing the spiritual side of someone's personality. It's a very lovely concept.

I'm a total control freak and love to participate in the design of every single aspect of life.

I just want to make sure I have a sense of balance between work and life because work is my life and the lines can get really blurry.

I love inventive food but I want the classic dishes to taste like how I remember them. I get a little bummed out when there is too much fancy stuff going on and it doesn't resemble the original dish at all.

Being a Barrymore didn't help me other than giving me a great sense of pride and a strange spiritual sense that I felt OK about having the passion to act. It made sense because my whole family had done it and it helped rationalise it for me.

Going back to Georgiana Drew and John Drew and my great-grandfather Maurice Barrymore and it was such a sort of circus of odd interesting people that loved acting.

When things are perfect that's when you need to worry most.

There's a tremendous difference between alone and lonely. You could be lonely in a group of people. I like being alone. I like eating by myself. I go home at night and just watch a movie or hang out with my dog. I have to exert myself and really say oh God I've got to see my friends 'cause I'm too content being by myself.

Internet does not equal sodium pentothal.

I want people to be blown away when I do what they don't expect.

When you've been locked up in a mental institution people are going to ask questions. It was OK because I didn't have to act perfect all the time.

The older you get the few slumber parties there are, and I hate that. I liked slumber parties. What happened to them?