Insightful Quotes by Sarah Jessica Parker (and character Carrie Bradshaw)

In a relationship, when does the art of compromise become compromising?

Do we need distance to get close?

Can you really forgive if you can't forget?

The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself.

A best friend is like a four leaf clover: a hard to find and lucky to have.

I love, love, love being an actor -- it's still the hardest and scariest thing I do, outside of parenting. But I've always been someone who likes a busy day.

Trying to be a man is a waste of a woman?

He's the funniest, smartest person I know. It doesn't mean he doesn't bug me and I'm sure I bug him sometimes.

I cringe inside when anybody gives me something. I don't know why. I just get embarrassed.

I'm always nervous before a job! I always think I'm going to be fired, I always think I can't do it. I always think I'm going to disappoint somebody, myself included.

Where's the line between professional girlfriend, and just plain professional?

I find it so ironic that all you do, for the earliest part of your life, is try to be like everybody else. And then you turn 30, and you realize all you want to do is distinguish yourself in some way.

I know that he, Matthew Broderick, doesn't have his laundry done, and that he hasn't had a hot meal in days. That stuff weighs on my mind.

Matthew and I used to read Dickens together. Oh my god, it was so great. We would sit in the bathtub and pass the book back and forth reading passages out loud.

I've never done nudity in my whole career. I certainly don't think now is the time to start. I don't think it's necessary for anything I've done, although I have absolutely no opinions against anyone who feels comfortable doing it.

It was very flattering when Manolo Blahnik named a shoe after me.

It's a tricky time because people are going after the wrong people, too. There's a misplaced rage and aggression, that as a person in a public position you almost feel like you have to be perfect now when you express yourself. It feels almost unfortunate.

It's like reading a book about a life that you will never occupy, but that's the beauty of being transported.

I knocked part of my tooth out with a scrubbing brush on stage whilst singing 'Hard Knock Life' in Annie.

When a relationship dies do we ever really give up the ghost or are we forever haunted by the spirits of relationships past?

I just wasn't one of those girls who dreamt of her wedding day and the birth of her first child.

I never was Carrie Bradshaw, but imagine how great it was to be told, You are obligated to kiss all these men, to dress like that, and to carry on like that! They were great guys, too.

I think growing up in a big family taught me a lot of problem solving and how to share and compromise, and that's been helpful in my marriage.

As we speed along this endless road to the destination called who we hope to be, I can't help but whine, 'Are we there yet?'.

After all, computers crash, people die, relationships fall apart. The best we can do is breath and reboot.

Often I'll go to the market, and women will say to me: Let me see your shoes. And then I show them I'm wearing flip-flops.

Someone once told me that children are like heroin. You always want more. Yet first-borns are special because you'll never have your first child again.

I strangely feel better before I go through hair and makeup. Maybe that's just because I feel like me.

The great challenge for me is to be all things to all people; I want to be a great mother, and I want to feel good when I'm at work.

Come little children, I'll take thee away into a Land of Enchantment. Come little children, the time's come to play here in my Garden of Magic.

My son doesn't know how flawed I am, how flawed we are. He still likes us so much, and that's so incredible to be around.

Graham Norton makes me laugh. I love him. I'm not kidding. I watch him on BBC America every week. He's so fast.

People go to casinos for the same reason they go on blind dates -- hoping to hit the jackpot. But mostly, you just wind up broke or alone in a bar.

A knockoff is not as easy to spot when it comes to love.

I really love eating, so I love reading about food, and I religiously read the dining section in newspapers.

I spent more time playing a person I was not than the person I am.

Work was never about wanting fame or money. I never thought about that. I loved getting the job, going to rehearsal, playing someone else, hanging around with a bunch of actors. I needed that, the way you need water.

I believe in God, but in my own unconventional way. We're not affiliated with any organisation, and I have no religious education of any kind, but I definitely have my own kind of ideas about it.

I thought if I had straight hair and a perfect nose, my whole career would be different.

I love the smell of diapers; I even like when they're wet and you smell them all warm like a baked good. I love the smell of Balmex. Love it.

I don't know what I can do about the aging. Yes, I am aging. Oh my God, I'm aging all the time. It's like those flowers that wilt in front of you in time-lapse films. But what can I possibly do? Look like a lunatic?

My involvement with UNICEF is particularly important to me because it is UNICEF that introduced me to volunteerism, thereby helping me to set my own personal standard of contributing my time and giving back to others. Working on behalf of UNICEF's lifesaving efforts is one of my most valued roles.

I took a page from the playwright Wendy Wasserstein's book. She said 'I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist.'

There are occasions that I love to be fashionable and enjoy, you know? But the work day of a mother doesn't include a hair making team or any consideration of your shoe.

What you think you know versus what you actually learn.

I've always been an actor. That's my job -- I can be anything you want me to be.

I've worn so many things, I've tried on so many things...I've spent probably thousand of hours in fittings. I can know so quickly how something's going to feel on me, look on me. It's a pretty fast courtship. I say yes or no pretty quickly.

Most important to me is my home life and the well-being of my children.

You can't live in New York City and be the most important person in town; you just can't. There are too many other important people here.

My mother was a master juggler. If you ask her, she'll say she was a wreck. There's plenty of screaming that went on in the house, but I think it was necessary just to be heard. There were eight children!

If you have a child, you're improvising with rules all day long, and some of them are total lies.

I love Jennifer Hudson! She is so lovely on screen. She is so buoyant and youthful off screen as much as on.

People always assume that I'm some sort of party girl, and that's such a misconception because I like staying home.

It's not that I'm using my life to put on screen or in my acting, it's that, when you're living in the world, you're exposed to stories, to people, to things that feel foreign and unfamiliar. And I'm curious about those things, me personally.

I love walking into a closet and smelling lingering perfume, so I always spray my clothes. And at the end of the bottle, when the atomizer no longer reaches the tiny little dribble that is left, I unscrew the top and pour the remainder onto a t-shirt or dress.

I don't feel that my life, my professional life, is married to a reliance upon Instagram.

I'm not on Twitter. In theory, I really like Instagram. I think it's a warmer environment. I think, though conversations can erupt that aren't always friendly, you have an opportunity to jump in and redirect and even caution people against language and behavior that I personally object to.

You can't do four movies and be good to everybody and be flying all night and shooting all day with a different wig and then be going to sing on Broadway without feeling a little tired. You endlessly feel you're letting somebody down.

Fashion is not a luxury, it's a right.

The Eskimos have hundreds of word for snow but we've invented three times that many words for relationships. What really defines a relationship?

I'm thinking balls are to men, what purses are to women. It's just a little bag but we'd feel naked in public without it.

Being single used to mean that nobody wanted you. Now it means you're pretty sexy and you're taking your time deciding how you want your life to be and who you want to spend it with.

If you're a nice person and you work hard, you get to go shopping at Barneys. It's the decadent reward.

I do wait in line, and I do take the subway, and I do my own grocery shopping, and I do take the kids to school. But it almost doesn't matter to a certain segment of the populace.

I really love beautiful, well-made clothes. I don't shop a lot, so I tend to have pieces for a long time. I like mixing vintage with newer designers.

I got to thinking about relationships and partial lobotomies. Two seemingly different ideas that might just be perfect together -- like chocolate and peanut butter.

The firsts go away -- first love, first kiss, first baby. You have to create new ones.

Are we simply romantically challenged, or are we sluts?

I love Matthew Broderick. Call me crazy, but I love him. We can only be in the marriage we are. We're very devoted to our family and our lives. I love our life. I love that he's the father of my children, and it's because of him that there's this whole other world that I love.

What I've learned about being a parent is how much you sort of secretly learn from everyone else and how valuable it is.

We all live in a time where we're supposed to have choices and how do we wrangle that and how do we make the best choices for ourselves and our families. It has nothing to do with feminism.

So we strive for perfection in the areas in which we can control, and that isn't necessarily what provides contentment and joy for ourselves and, more importantly, for our children.

I wouldn't know how to be on Facebook if my life depended on it.

I'm less Pollyanna now. That's probably healthy.

I have a lot of responsibilities outside myself. I have a large family. I want to know I can always be helpful.

It's not like it's hard to be decent and respectful and well-behaved. I do wait in line, and I do take the subway, and I do do my own grocery shopping, and I do take the kids to school.

I never wanted to be a celebrity; I never wanted to be famous. And in my daily life, I work really hard to not trade on it in any way.

I expect I should be more calloused by now, but I am so sensitive about not ever living up to anybody's worst idea about an actor who is well-known.

I still like getting dressed up and having the opportunity to borrow beautiful dresses, but as a mother -- and as somebody who's schedule isn't always my own -- I don't shop a lot, or think about clothes a lot.

I'm aware of people's association with me and fashion and I certainly take that role on for some occasions, but it doesn't dominate my thoughts all the time.

I'm a bitter-ender. It's potentially my fatal flaw that I do not give up on something. I will not rest. I work and work and work until I can no longer and someone has to remove me from the premises.

I love the opportunity to wear something really special and go to a wonderful event at some great cultural institution.

If I didn't have kids, I would be at the theater or the ballet every single night of my life.

The beautiful thing about New York is, you have to expose yourself to other people the minute you step outside the door. There is no choice. And I love that.

Read the editorial page of your local paper. It introduces you to opinion and can be terrifically provocative and perhaps a great motivating force for you to get involved in your community, regardless of your political ideology.

Friends are readily disappointed by the size of my closet. And I thought it was big!

I remember when I came home from the hospital after having my son, I wore a Narciso Rodriguez black coat. Then, I was using this fragrance that I had created. I walk by that coat, and it still smells like that fragrance. It takes you right there.

I don't know how an actress is supposed to observe and create new stuff if she hasn't been on the streets, brushing up against humanity. You have to have a life.

I have a fantastic husband. Here's the honeymoon part: I still think he's the funniest, wittiest, most clever man I've ever known.

Most of my friends in New York are single women or gay men.

When I go to a premiere I like to borrow lovely clothes and shoes from designers. It's like the library: if you return them in good condition, you get to borrow more. I'm very lucky.

As a woman, I have an inherent need to be all things to all people, to make certain everybody's taken care of. I know I can't sustain that level all the time, so I'm finding the proper balance and it's made me infinitely happier.

One of the things that's great about New York is that it is not a one-industry town. It has education, academia, the service industry, arts, publishing, theater, politics, fashion, finance, as well as movie-making.

When men attempt bold gestures, generally it's considered romantic. When women do it, it's often considered desperate or psycho.

I don't believe in email. I'm an old-fashioned girl. I prefer calling and hanging up.

When real people fall down in life, they get right back up and keep walking.

Men who are too good looking are never good in bed because they never had to be.

To be in a couple, do you have to put your single self on a shelf?

I write about sex, not love. What do I know about love?

When it comes to life and love, why do we believe our worst reviews?

If two people have only one thought between them, something is very wrong.

Balls are to men what purses are to women.

Can you make a mistake and miss your fate?

Every once in awhile, a girl has to indulge herself.

Maybe our mistakes are what make our fate.

I'm very, very concerned about the Bush presidency. I'm worried about the kinds of cuts in domestic programs that mean something to a lot of people, including members of my family, who depend on certain things from the government.

It's like the riddle of the Sphinx... why are there so many great unmarried women, and no great unmarried men?

I tell my friends married life is boring, but that's just a fun thing to say to make single people feel better.

My job requires me to put on a little dress and run around the streets of New York in heels. But I also had the financial means to hire a yoga teacher to come to my house while my sitter watched the newborn. For 95 percent of the world, that's not realistic.

And if you are a parent, introduce your children to their neighborhood library. It will give them a real sense of independence to have their own library card and enjoy borrowing books.

So many roads. So many detours. So many choices. So many mistakes.

I like my money right where I can see it... hanging in my closet.

Follow your instincts and do not let other people's opinion of you become your opinion of yourself.

You can't be friends with a squirrel! A squirrel is just a rat with a cuter outfit.

I don't judge others. I say if you feel good with what you're doing, let your freak flag fly.

I developed a really strong work ethic, and I don't take anything for granted.

A squirrel is just a rat with a cuter outfit!

Soul mate: two little words, one big concept. A belief that someone, somewhere, is holding the key to your heart.

I don't have time for regrets, only fun.

Maybe you have to let go of who you were to become who you will be.

Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed. Maybe they just need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with them.

I'd much rather be someone's shot of whiskey than everyone's cup of tea.

I'm missing the bride gene. I should be put in a test tube and studied.