Cynthia Nixon Quotations

My private life is private. But at the same time, I have nothing to hide. So what I will say is that I am very happy.

Motherhood is the only thing in my life that I've really known for sure is something I wanted to do.

While I don't often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual. I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have 'chosen' is to be in a gay relationship.

My girlfriend is much better than I am at working hard then resting, and she demands that from me, too. She insists on having time when we don't do anything. We leave the housework and watch a movie.

In terms of sexual orientation I don't really feel I've changed. I don't feel there was a hidden part of my sexuality that I wasn't aware of. I'd been with men all my life, and I'd never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn't seem so strange.

I do tend to be an analyzer. I'm an old English major from way back, so I do have fun tearing apart texts and trying to find the hidden secrets and the subtexts in there.

I'm an old English major from way back, so I do have fun tearing apart texts and trying to find the hidden secrets and the subtexts in there.

Nobody ever really thought of me as sexy, right? They thought of me as smart and quirky.

The idea of making access to safe abortions harder and more expensive and more difficult, having to travel across state lines - that puts women's health and lives in jeopardy, which is something I think no one wants.

Abortion is a right I feel must not go away, and I feel like people aren't mobilizing so much because it's so complicated and it's difficult to understand.

Your good friend has just taken a piece of cake out of the garbage and eaten it. You will probably need this information when you check me into the Betty Crocker Clinic.

I always sort of thought, 'I'm probably going to get breast cancer. There's a really good chance.'

I love a warm bath at the end of a day.

I am heat obsessed. I crave the heat in my bedroom.

I don't define myself. I'm just a woman in love with another woman.

The recognition factor is so much higher when I'm a redhead, so when I'm a blonde I can pass under the radar a lot more easily.

I understand that if I really need my hair to be nice, now I hire someone to do it, and I understand that putting on a pair of heels really makes a difference.

I always like to start my morning with a good amount of fruit. I really like pineapple, particularly because of the enzymes that it has. Sometimes I have oatmeal. But if I'm feeling like I really want to be watching my weight more, then I definitely do a protein, like an omelet, scrambled eggs or some smoked salmon.

A couple of hanging glands have nothing to do with making someone a man.

I just want my relationship to be more for myself rather than a public statement.

Women's health needs to be front and center - it often isn't, but it needs to be.

Abortion is a hard thing for Hollywood to deal with because it is so controversial and you don't want to alienate half your audience by sending one message or the other.

Most child actors, once they hit 18, once they hit 21, that's it. Even teenage kids often don't make the transition.

My mother has battled breast cancer three times.

Miranda: I just got Brady to sleep. Dr. Leeds: Now, do you sing to him? Miranda: Only if he's been bad.

I have low self-esteem, but I express it the healthy way... by eating a box of Double-Stuff Oreos.

I was actually in the midst of breakfast, and Angela Tarantino, who does publicity at HBO, called me -- very excited, shrieking into the phone. It was very nice. ... 'Sex and the City' won last year, which was so exciting, but Sarah and I weren't out there because we are doing plays in New York. So you can be sure we will be there this year with bells on this time around.

When women got the vote, they did not redefine voting. When African-Americans got the right to sit at a lunch counter alongside white people, they did not redefine eating out. They were simply invited to the table. That is all we want to do; we have no desire to change marriage. We want to be entitled to not only the same privileges but the same responsibilities as straight people

Cancer is really hard to go through and it's really hard to watch someone you love go through, and I know because I have been on both sides of the equation.

I have a cousin, a second cousin, who lives in L.A., and she was with me while I was getting ready. She was talking about her father and his brothers. And I remember my mother's tales of how competitive they were with each other and how they would play for blood, you know. And I thought - I'm an only child, and I don't know what that's like. I have to figure out the Southern thing.

I believe we all have different ways we came to the gay community and we can't and shouldn't be pigeon-holed into one cultural narrative which can be uninclusive and disempowering.

I am definitely as happy as I've ever been. Happier, I would say, than I've ever been.

I was in film before I was on stage. I started acting when I was like 12. But, no, I think my mother indoctrinated me very early.

I never felt like there was an unconscious part of me around that woke up or that came out of the closet; there wasn't a struggle, there wasn't an attempt to suppress.

I feel that between my experience and my mother's, breast cancer is a little bit like someone who lives next door. I know what that person looks like and what their daily habits are.

I used to just take every job that seemed relatively appealing. But now I take a job and it's in the trades the next day - it feels like people are watching and waiting to see what you do, and when you do take a job, attention is noted.

I think Nancy Reagan felt so judged all the time and she felt so unlovable.

I go for my completely routine mammogram and then I get a call from my gynecologist. And she says, 'Well, I have some - it's not such great news, but here it is, but it's very small and we're just going to get in there and take it right out, right away, and then you'll probably have radiation.'

I can't go on anymore bad dates. I would rather be home alone than out with some guy who sells socks on the internet.

Unlike me, a lot of child actors are very short, which is why they work. So when they're 15 they can play 11 or when they're 18 they can play 14. They look young for so long, they have abilities a much younger kid wouldn't have.

Nancy Reagan would just run up to these kids [with really painful disabilities and deformities] and hold them and pick them up... because I think she felt so judged all the time and she felt so unlovable.

I'm a very big public school advocate.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. So the only thing to really be afraid of is if you don't go get your mammograms.

Now I have a third must-do on my list of things to do with cancer, and it's this: follow your gut, ask questions, don't be complacent.

Nancy Reagan, when presented with kids with really painful disabilities and deformities, she was completely undaunted.

Women are half the population and they know how to take care of themselves, if they are only given access to health care.

What I do for exercise sort of depends on what's happening in the rest of my life.

In terms of sexual orientation I don't really feel I've changed ... I'd been with men all my life, and I'd never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn't seem so strange. I'm just a woman in love with another woman.

Some friends of mine who are actors feel directing shuts them down and kills all their impulses, but the worst thing for me is if I feel a director hasn't noticed.

I'm so not a financial person.

I've seen wonderful stay-at-home moms and moms who could use a little improving.

There are a lot of myths about gay people.

Even in Kitty Kelley's book, which is so negative, they talk about, as with all first ladies, that Nancy Reagan is constantly around to take photo ops with kids.

I've always been wary of marriage.

What is wonderful to see is how incredibly affectionate and physically affectionate Nancy Reagan was, you know? She was so on her guard, she was threatened by just about everybody.

I am not a redhead, I'm a blonde.

I am always looking for a great play and a great part to do.

I think [nancy Reagan] was a very controlled and controlling person, because she was so scared all the time and because she had such an inner sense of panic.

Even though I'm over 35, I feel like so much more of a leading lady than I did when I was 30.

[Nancy Reagan] took that career, that obviously mattered to her, and just tucked it away in a box, because she thought, "That's over with now. I'm going to make wifehood my career."

Nancy Reagan actually took some movies that she didn't want to take because they were [with Ronald Reagan] really strapped for cash.

I don't have Steve. There is no having the Steve.

I don't really want to get married to get married pretend.

I had a lumpectomy. It wasn't that bad. Six and a half weeks of radiation.

I have a lot of shoes.

Nancy Reagan sort of downplayed that, you know - but she was quite successful. At the time she married Ronald Reagan, I think she was keenly aware that [Reagan's first wife] Jane Wyman's career had eclipsed Ronald Reagan's, so she was very determined not to have that happen.

I'm fairly out of the loop when it comes to pop culture.

I met this woman, I fell in love with her, and I'm a public figure.

I understood more what Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan, what they were coming from. Kind of the horrors of their childhoods that they were coming from. When you experience such pain early on, some people really interface with that pain and try and unpack it, and some people just take it and squelch it down and try and be as successful as they can. And, you know, encourage everybody, "Don't dwell on the negative! Come on, buck up!"

I think TV is the only place left where you can have a midsize something.

I'd do a show about garbagemen if it was good!

I also grew to love Nancy Reagan in a certain way. I learned more - certainly I learned more bad stuff that I had known about in greater detail, but I also got a lot of empathy.

I find that vegetables like butternut squash, which I feel unexcited about as a side dish, I'm thrilled to eat in a soup.

I think women still want to be married. But I don't think they'll do anything to get married anymore

I am very annoyed about this issue. Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate. I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with.

I did an after-school special as my first big thing. It was starring Butterfly McQueen. She was the name. But the real star of it was Robbie Rist, who was that little blond kid who looked like John Denver.

And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people its not, but for me its a choice, and you dont get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if its a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesnt matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.

There are no available men in their thirties in New York. Giuliani had them removed along with the homeless.

[My mother] was taking me to Shakespeare In The Park when I was like 6. There was just a lot of theater-going and a lot of movie-going and a lot of discussion about it afterwards, dissecting it and stuff.

Gay people who want to marry have no desire to redefine marriage in any way. When women got the right to vote, it did not redefine voting.

Talk with your doctor, make healthy lifestyle choices and most importantly, know your body - as that can make all the difference in the world.

As I said in the Times and will say again here, I do, however, believe that most members of our community — as well as the majority of heterosexuals — cannot and do not choose the gender of the persons with whom they seek to have intimate relationships because, unlike me, they are only attracted to one sex.

I think my least healthy habit is running around too much. And I think I'm getting better about it as I'm getting older.

I'm a total theater junkie - whether I'm working on a stage or sitting in a seat. I am always looking for a great play and a great part to do.

In a school where everyone is famous or rich or whatever, you have a culture, 'What does your dad do?' 'What does your mom do?

I was posing as a 9-year-old girl who was a blue-ribbon prizewinner; she rode on a Shetland pony, the small horse that was the appropriate size for her.

If you make the decision to send your kid to public school don't even look at private schools. Just shut the door. Just turn off the TV. And then you don't even have to worry about preschool. You have to worry about what's good for your kid, but you don't have to worry about how to position yourself.

I feel like when I really did my research, I both came to hate Nancy Reagan more.

I think it was interesting to be steeped in that [political] world.

It was weird to be in a movie that's very clearly a period piece [like Killing Reagan], but that's about a time that's within my own memory. That's really weird. And conscious memory, not just vague.

It is interesting to see how far we've come as a society since then. But also how everybody keeps touching [Ronald] Reagan and trying to evoke him.

Even when the [Ronald] Reagan revolution happened, it was in large way, a "'Let's make America great again' without saying that" kind of a movement, don't you feel? It was kind of a throwback to an earlier generation.

Make America great again? Right, but now it comes back to us in a completely twisted way. And in some ways they achieve that, or they at least achieve the appearance of that, but now you try and do it again and it's just... it's so out of sync with who we obviously are as a people.

It just feels to me like the death throes of an America that had many great things about it, but had many negative things about it. I don't want to go back.

The panelists on To Tell The Truth, which is the one that I really knew, they cared about getting it right. They wanted to guess, you know? Although, when I was on as a contestant, the one time I was on as a contestant, apparently they had a rule, which was that when children were on, everybody would get a vote - and Kitty Carlisle voted for me.

I was a huge Della Reese fan, when Della Reese was on. I idolized all the panelists. I was in love with Kitty Carlisle. Nipsey Russell, Bill Cullen, Peggy Cass, Gene Rayburn.

Every Thursday or something, my mother would shoot it at NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center. And sometimes she would have me there when Morris The Cat was on, and Lassie was on.

When [Nancy Reagan] was presented with people who she really felt like weren't going to [judge her], there was such a floodgate of affection and warmth and physical affection that, most of the time, was kept at bay because, "Oh, someone's going to say something." I think that [because of] so many things that happened to her in her childhood, but also in the press.

When Nancy Reagan was newly the first lady of California, Joan Didion came and had an hour-long interview. She thought it went great, and then Joan Didion just eviscerated her in the most - possibly not inaccurate - but in the most devastating way.

We didn't know each other before [ the Killing Reagan], but I just knew we would love each other [with Tim Matheson].