Ashley Judd Quotations

I was always told I was special. And I was also assured that I had a gift and a purpose.

When I was working on Eye of the Beholder, I played a character who is so aloof that my whole lifestyle became very aloof. If someone knocked on my door, there was a part of me that went into a rage, because I wanted to be isolated and alone.

I think that, as with marriage, you just know when it's time to have kids.

Well, the fact is that one imagination is critically important, and if you have had your imagination stimulated by what is basically a variety of subjects, you are much more amenable to accepting, to understanding and interacting with the realities of the world.

It's up to us to take pop culture back and to express quality and dignity for both boys and girls.

Ruby in Paradise and the intensity and quality that I was able to experience on Smoke were equally as important to me as working on this movie every day for three-and-a-half months.

I think that being perceptive and having interests is nothing but an asset.

Everything I've done has been personally fun, important, and meaningful to me.

I did a lot of hiking and I loved it.

I get lonely when I'm a Playstation widow.

More often than what you're suggesting, I find people are surprised that I have an urban side to me.

Some Kentucky fans are a little more subdued.

Yeah, I've had the privilege to know a lot of really talented people.

And it blew my mind when I started to get wind of the fact that they actually liked me being around. That was humbling, because Kentucky basketball is a big deal, and I am not the biggest fan - I am just the most notorious one.

You don't stay married for 35 years by accident. I think that that's willful and intentional and something that both people really want.

I think it's easy for me to connect to some people, and I don't know if that's the same thing as falling in love whereas before, I might have said it was.

I think that we give the impression, to carry on your metaphor, that we go a little faster than we actually do. I'm fairly lazy so I'm always interested in slowing down.

It's funny, though, because when I first started going to races after we met, I was extremely nervous. It's like being backstage and hoping you don't trip over something or break an amp or accidentally speak into a live microphone, so I was really hesitant.

And of course there's so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it's obviously useful through the season. There are so many people, songwriters, who are around.

No, I don't tolerate pressure from anyone about anything.

I can't think of anything I want and need that I don't already have but at the same time, I'm not sated.

I've always been crazy for the American songbook.

I've been devoted to Alison Krauss for many, many years.

Regardless, we are a two career household, and it's Dario's season, and I'm really excited about going racing.

A lot of people over the years have been doing yoga and I think even more these days are expressing an interest in it. So there are a lot of manifestations of spirituality here in town.

Both my husband and I give a lot of ourselves in what we do because that is our public lives but in my private life, I have an intrinsic right to be left alone.

I have a lot of variety within me, and the dream role, I think, is actually a compilation of parts that express different aspects of my persona and personal interests.

I have a responsibility to nurture and shepherd my talent and when I'm living the parts of my life not related to that I feel I have the right to be left alone.

People say that to me and I think what unites all my characters is that they are hurt; it's most accurate to say I play characters that are hurt but are responding to their environment.

When I accept a role, I feel that as an artist I have to submit completely to the tutelage of my director. And while I expect to be heard and encouraged and honored, at the end of the day, man, it's the way the director wants it.

I do not want to give my power, my self-esteem, or my autonomy, to any person, place, or thing outside myself. [...] The only thing that matters is how I feel about myself, my personal integrity, and my relationship with my Creator.

Self care isn't selfish. It's self esteem.

The insanity has to stop...It affects each and every one of us, in multiple and nefarious ways: our self-image, how we show up in our relationships and at work, our sense of our worth, value, and potential as human beings. Join in-and help change-the Conversation.

I think that [Obama] is a powerful leader. I think he’s a brilliant man. I think that he has an incredible devotion to our constitution, and that he is now able to flower more as the president I knew he could be.

As a Goodwill Ambassador for YouthAIDS, I've learned that the face of AIDS is increasingly young and female. By educating young people and empowering them to make the right choices we can stop the spread of HIV/AIDS

My mothers into frilly dresses and eyelashes and hairstyles from the 1970s. We always argue about that.

Getting married is an incredible act of hopefulness.

When we were growing up, we were so poor that our heritage was the only thing we had. Mama would say, 'Kids, pour more water in the soup. Better days are coming.'

I have said countless times that unless you are delivering a product and service that is really needed and unless you are doing it really well, you don't stick around for 80 years.

I'd just as soon freeze to death.

Well, maybe there are one or two things about the double jeopardy concept that are overlooked. I could be charged with violating my probation. I could be charged for illegal possession of a firearm or violating his civil rights if I did kill him. But when you're making a movie, there's only so much that you can do. I know that some people, while thoroughly enjoying it, have said, It's a little bit implausible. But it's such great fun.

I very much believe in things unseen, both of positive and destructive energy, and I have never seen The Exorcist through from start to finish. I find it too realistic, frankly, and too disturbing for me. I absolutely believe in spiritual warfare and have experienced it in my life. So I respect Mr. Friedkin's extraordinary success with that, but it's not a picture I'll ever see.

It is better to begin in the evening than not at all.

Campaigning actress ASHLEY JUDD refuses to 'breed' with her racing star husband DARIO FRANCHITTI while there are starving children in the world. . . . She says, 'It's unconscionable to breed with the number of children who are starving to death in impoverished countries.'

She wasn't that tough on me, but I think she was often a little frightened - being a single parent. So it begets this quality of desired absoluteness that doesn't really exist. My sister could crack her up. She'd be getting into trouble and put the Steve Martin arrow through her head and mom would start to laugh. I didn't have the same sort of wiliness.

When I allow myself to feel all my feelings instead of numbing myself to them, they pass more quickly. I spent my entire life telling everyone I was "OK, damn it." But when you surrender to the [uncomfortable] feelings, there are gifts on the other side: Allowing yourself to feel loneliness forces you to reach out. Letting yourself get angry gives you strength, energy and motivation.

It's unconscionable to breed with the number of children who are starving to death in impoverished countries,

Abstinence, being faithful and correct and consistent condom use are the only ways to successfully reach everyone when discussing HIV prevention. I believe that the abstinence message alone does not solve the AIDS epidemic.

My vocation is to make my life an act of worship

The empowerment of girls and women is an essential tool to preventing the HIV/AIDS emergency from exploding any further

Daily meditation keeps me sane. I memorize prayers or poems that express my highest spiritual ideals, and quietly, word for word, go through the prayer first thing in the morning. Julian of Norwich or St. Francis or the compassionate Buddha. It's called passage meditation. You internalize the perennial philosophies.

Cross-generational sex is the phenomenon in which young girls are given material goods in exchange for sex. All girls are vulnerable to it, particularly orphans.

Your private relationship with yourself is a spring that will feed every other factor.

I have a very ecumenical faith. I have a very inclusive faith. There's a quote I love from recovery literature that says, "The realm of the spirit is roomy and broad. It is open to all." I've absolutely staked my life on that.

I do think prayer is powerful and it is not to be diminished. Some of us who are struggling to put food on the table and are wondering where the next paycheck is coming from or have dangerous health situations and they don't have access to appropriate care do pray - do pray for yourselves and for others.

The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted.

A wonderful pastor I know once told me, "Perfectionism is the highest order of self-abuse." So now I try to remind myself that if I engage in perfectionism, I am abusing myself. Period.

Tough girls come from New York. Sweet girls, theyre from Georgia. But us Kentucky girls, we have fire and ice in our blood. We can ride horses, be a debutante, throw left hooks, and drink with the boys, all the while making sweet tea, darlin. And if we have an opinion, you know youre gonna hear it.

God doesn't make mistakes and timing unfolds as it should.

The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about.

You have so much power to bring awareness, prevention and change.

Everyone can relate to depression. It touches so many. Suicide is the leading cause of death among teenagers. Statistics show that women suffer from depression more than men, but that is probably because men don't report it as much.

I have a lot of love to give, and when I give that love and others are able to receive it and show me their vulnerability, I believe that God inhabits that space, which means I basically hang out with God a lot, and that's why I feel hopeful.

My first big acting performance was in the Marilyn Monroe biography piece, and it required frontal nudity. I talked to Mira Sorvino, my co-star, about how nervous I was because I didn't know how my mom would react. She said, 'Can I be completely honest with you? I've seen your mom in interviews, and she seems pretty screwed up. I don't think there's much you could do to shock a broad like that.' And from that moment on it was big nipples to the wind!

I was powerless over my childhood but the coping strategies that I developed, to survive, all of which were creative and brilliant and got me through, as an adult those became my defects of character. Those became my shortcomings, control and all that kind of stuff... and that's my responsibility. I was a blameless child in what happened in the home; I take responsibility for my behaviors as an adult.

It doesn't matter what you've done in the past - what matters are the choices you make right now. God gives you the chance to start over with every breath.

Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it.

The way things happen on social media is so abusive and everyone needs to take personal responsibility for what they write and not allowing this misinterpretation and shaming culture on social media to persist.

The amount of gender violence that I experience is absolutely extraordinary. And a significant part of my day today will be spent filing police reports at home about gender violence that's directed at me in social media.