"I feel like I've been pregnant for 10 years.  I am so excited to really be able to sweat like I used to.  [When you are pregnant] you can't because you're always kind of scared, just kind of protective.  I'm definitely going to start working out in a huge way."

"I think every working mom probably feels the same thing which is you go through big chunks of time where you're just going 'this is impossible -- oh this is impossible.'  And then you just keep going and keep going and you sort of do the impossible."

"We try to have quality time together.  We go to the park.  We go to the beach, even when it is cold.  I consider myself to be very hands-on.  I really enjoy spending time with my kids.  I like picking them up from school and putting them in the bath."

"I love being a mom, but as any mother will tell you, if you stay at home with a [toddler] 24/7, you get mush brain.  You start wishing you were working.  Then when you are working, you're wishing you're home.  It's a tough dilemma."  [On her and her son Liam's reaction to her return to work this fall]  "I can't say that I had an easy time.  But he's really okay with it.  He always says, 'well, you're a mom, but you're an actress too.'"

"I have had moments in the last couple of years where, even though I've been at work and I go home and see the kids in the evening, I've felt that pull so badly.  I've said to [my husband] 'maybe I've got to stop this acting lark,' and he laughs at me.  He says, 'babe, you can't do that and you mustn't do that, because it's such a big part of you.'  It's about finding balance.  You have to be vigilant about important family things and important work things.  It's a real juggle. It was very trying to play a mother [in her new film Little Children] who basically couldn't feel cose to or look after the needs of her children. It was disturbing to put myself into that woman's head and it made me all the more aware of my responsibilities as a mother. It was such a cathartic experience to portray somebody who can't cope with her life that it reminded me how much I need my own children. That's why I've decided to take a year off to be with the kids and watch them grow and just enjoy the feeling of being very motherly."

"Women need to quit the yammering back and forth about stay-at-home mothers vs. working mothers. This whole thing I'm really impatient with is this whole mommy track and career track. If you want to be a mommy and stay home with children, then I encourage you to say that to yourself and figure out how to do that. If you want to have a career, have one.  It's a terribly discouraging thing to think that you can't work and be a good mother. I know a lot of kids that would've benefited if their mothers had gone to work."

[On balancing work and family life] "I suffer the same guilt.  I constantly worry I am coming up short.  It is the same thing every working mother copes with.  We all cope exactly the same way, which is with pride, with anxiety, with disappointment, with failure and small victories.  I deal with it like everyone else."

"Like all working mothers, sometimes I feel like a terrible mother and sometimes I feel like a terrible employee.  But for the most part, I try to give myself a break,  which is something I urge all mothers to do -- to live your life with a cloud of guilt about everything you are doing is just not good for anybody."

[on returning to series television with her new show Brothers & Sisters]  "I was really enjoying being a mom.  This is a wonderful opportunity, but I'm also giving something up."

"I hope I'm not failing as a parent in order to be a professional woman.  It's a very difficult balance, but it's something I am fighting for."