Quotes from Carrie Coon

I don't believe that art is just for entertainment. I want to create art that is meaningful in some way.

I grew up with babies, so babies have never been particularly intimidating to me.

Part of being an actor is the rhythm of the life of being an actor, and that involves coming together with a group of people, making something together that is intense and requires a lot of intimacy, and then walking away from it with the possibility that you will never see any of those people again.

I have my three brothers, and then I have my adopted sister from El Salvador, who is actually the oldest. My brother and I were already born, and then my parents adopted my sister from El Salvador during the war and had two more kids.

I'm a middle child, and I'm pretty diplomatic: the peace-maker.

Being a literature major, you know, I'm very familiar with the ways symbolism is used in our sort of mythic tales of society, so anyone who is consciously trying to pull that off I think is really interesting and clearly very smart.

My family has never understood why I play crazy, angry, depressed people because that is not the way they think of me. They see me as a totally messy, klutzy goofball - kind of weird and hyper.

There's something about Australia that feels prehistoric.

I rarely get recognized, and whenever I do, it has to do with 'The Leftovers' because it came into someone's life at a particularly important time for them - if they were dealing with grief or loss or whatever tragedy - and they just caught it. And there is no rhyme or reason to the kind of person it is.

I don't want to be famous. I want to tell stories.

I grew up in a family with five kids.

I've never felt terribly attached to acting because I always feel like the world is really big and really interesting, and there are a lot of places that I can put my energy and be fulfilled.

Inevitably, when a scene isn't working for me, it's because I'm being self-conscious, and I'm not putting enough of my focus on my fellow actor.

What's great about good writing is that it feels like life, so it's not hard to relate to her circumstances.

I ended up doing four or five plays in college and being an English major with my thesis in language acquisition, which I was planning to study in graduate school.

Inevitably, when directors work with me on a set, they say, 'This isn't what I was expecting. I thought you were going to be very serious.' But I like to stay loose and have a good time and not take myself too seriously. I think, otherwise, you get in your own way.

Everyone thinks I'm on 'Mindhunter!'

I really have the good fortune that the actors who work with me on 'The Leftovers' are thoughtful, hard working, open people and generous people.

When you have good writing, the rhythm of the scene is very apparent. What the scene demands is very clear.

We don't have control over many things. We're always grasping for it, but in reality, we don't have a lot of control.

I have this idea of myself as this quiet, observant, thoughtful child, which my parents roundly contradict. They claim that I was loud and bossy and dancing all the time.

I think there's a danger in how we can get addicted to the things that reaffirm to us who we are. For example, Facebook; people who make these Facebook posts about what's happening to them, just so people will chime in and give them positive reinforcement.

I rely on poetry or literature to keep me centered before I go onstage because it reminds me to be present.

Literature has always been the greatest fuel for my imagination.