Bonnie Hunt

When you fail by your own standards, it's a form of success.

I think families are so great, because when you go home, no matter what you've accomplished in your life, you still are the person you were in sixth grade to them. You know, it never really changes.

I was a good kid.

Would I like to be the lead girl? Who wouldn't?

My home is in Chicago, but I have an apartment in Los Angeles.

I still have my bad days when I think I'm not getting everything I deserve. But those pass quickly once my Mother gets on the phone and says, 'listen, we used to eat rocks and walk 80 miles a day to school.

I was very down as a teenager, very upset because I had gotten hurt in a car accident. But my dad was a source of strength. He used to say, 'It's the character with strength that God gives the most challenges to.' I've thought about that so many times in my life when things didn't go right.

Because I've been so blessed with a background in nursing and spent so much time with patients at a really intimate, vulnerable time in their lives, the one lesson I've learned is that you never turn down a challenge where you can keep your creative integrity and your heart and soul and your sense of self.

There's nothing funnier than religion. Try explaining it to a kid. I had it all wrong when I was a kid.

I think you have to see the high highs and the low lows to get to the core of what makes us tick as people.

My only power is my ability to do something with passion and do it well. It's also something someone cannot take way from me, so it's very valuable.

If I've learned one thing in life, it's: Stand for something or you'll fall for anything.

If I couldn't be Dick Van Dyke, I wanted to be Art Carney.

Restaurants in Chicago are seldom disappointing.

Chicago has definitely played a part in my character development. I love the essence of the city, the personalities of the people, the hard-working spirit that you need to get through the winters. And every neighborhood has its great restaurants and the local hot-dog stand.

The thing about Pixar, they don't do the 'trend is your friend.' They're really about timeless story telling, and that's pretty great.

Anything Pixar does, you know, I really just am in awe of them and thrilled to be included in anything they do.

I wanted to be a story teller so badly.

When I first landed at Pixar, I felt like I found this creative oasis with John Lasseter... It's what you thought Hollywood was going to be.

When I was in high school, I hid in the back seat of an old boyfriend's car when he was out with another girl. He finally found me, but not until after he had made out with her for an hour.

In my neighborhood growing up, 8, 10,12 kids were the norm. Those stay-at-home moms would handle so much physically and emotionally. Even in my early teens, I could tell those ladies were something.

Humor is very healing.

All my brothers and sisters are really witty, and I would just sit back and enjoy them.

I remember, when I was 7, my dad found a pregnant dog on the railroad track one day and brought her home. So my mom explained about how this dog was married but that her husband had passed away - she didn't want me to even think that a dog could have babies without being married.

Improvisation, if you play it at the top of your intelligence, leads to a kind of truth that people find really accessible.

I don't write punch lines.

I don't understand the rewarding of behavior that is less than classy. I don't get it.

I'm right on the edge of getting another movie. It's between me and a famous person. The studio said they're thinking about going with somebody with a name. I said, 'That's great! Because I have one!'

I live in this apartment building, and everybody who lives there thinks of me as a housewife. People drop their babies off with me. Or I get notes: 'I'm going to be gone for three days. The keys are under the mat; take care of the cats.' Because they all think I'm home all the time.

I grew up in a working-class neighborhood, so there was always a sense of struggle, but we had hope.

I thought of school as a captive audience. It gave me a chance to work on my material.

I'm a blue-collar Chicago girl raised on wonderful movies my mom took us to, ones that had a lot of heart.