Swinton: "My understanding is that it's quite difficult for actors in the theater to know anybody but actors in the theater. It's the whole concept of the amniotic fluid surrounding one industry, holding people in place."

Swinton: "I don't have a career, I have a life. I don't have an exterior judgment on what would be good or bad for me."

Swinton: "There is something insane about a lack of doubt. Doubt - to me, anyway - is what makes you human, and without doubt, even the righteous lose their grip, not only on reality but also on their humanity."

Swinton: "I do like not knowing where I'm going, wandering in strange woods, whistling and following bread crumbs."

Swinton: "I spent a lot of time thinking that I was some kind of foundling, that I had been a changeling, that I had been found under a bush somewhere, and that I couldn't possibly be kin - but the more I live, the more I feel absolutely like I come out of my family. I'm a sort of strange natural progression."

Swinton: "Faith is in the eye of the beholder."

Swinton: "The thing that keeps me being a performer is my interest in society's obsession with identity, because I'm not sure that I really believe identity exists."

Swinton: "I don't love the theatre. I'm just not one of them."

Swinton: "I've been on the other side of the table many times, trying to get people to be sympathetic to projects, and I've been the victim of that kind of intense kindness masking extreme stupidity."

Swinton: "It may be unfair of me but I do feel I know it."

Swinton: "I sometimes think I was always left-wing. I know that sounds completely crazy, but I do know that I asked questions when I was about four, and I remember noticing that I wasn't getting an answer, and I remember it annoying me."

Swinton: "Everybody thinks for one moment when they're pregnant that they're actually carrying the spawn of the devil."

Swinton: "I remember noticing, when I had my babies, how much I liked them, and not just loved them, but I was really into them. I knew I was going to be curious about them and up for the mayhem ahead. But at the same time, I remember noticing I was relieved this thing was present in me. And I hadn't realised there might be a doubt."

Swinton: "I don't really look like people in films; I look like people in paintings."

Swinton: "For a lot of actors, there's a sort of code of honor around playing something other than yourself, which I just don't have. I love feeling like I'm - I won't even say acting out, but performing in some deep seam of my consciousness or my family's consciousness or my past. That's really amusing to me."