Quotes from Nia Vardalos

When I write something, I constantly rewrite.

It's called show business for a reason. The theater owners want to make money, and understandably so.

I do get approached every day by people who say, 'Why don't you make more movies?' I don't really miss it when I get to go and watch my daughter in the Christmas pageant.

I think there is a moment in every parent's life where we realize that we have lost ourselves a little bit. It's a moment of looking in the mirror and going, 'I need to put on some lipstick.'

Ever since I became a parent, time moves far too quickly. My vision always feels like I'm wearing giant kaleidoscope-goggles.

You're as strong as the actors you're working with, your partners.

I don't work that much because I am selective.

My blood sugar went out of control. Diabetes runs in my family, so I went to see my doctor. He was like, 'Buck up,' and it was sort of the wake-up call that I needed to hear.

There's this constant guilt that comes with parenting. You always feel like you're never enough. If you're confident in your parenting, you probably suck at it.

On my daughter's first day of kindergarten, another mom said something that made me realize I had become my own Greek, suffocating mother. She said, 'Just think, in 13 years they'll leave us and go to college!' And I went, 'Gulp.'

My family knows everything about me. There are no secrets, which can be suffocating, but I also find comfort in it. You can always reach out an arm, and an aunty will be close by to tell you that your skirt is too short.

I don't card out my screenplays ever. I just have an idea I just sit down and write I don't edit.

Like most women, I thought it would be easy once I decided to start a family. I was surprised that Mother Nature kept poking me in the eye, saying, 'Nope, nope, nope.'

Socially, the issue of men's weight is simply not a big deal.

It was a sad process for me to become a mom, and a long process. I felt so embarrassed that I couldn't have a biological child.

If the standard route for creating a family had worked for me, I wouldn't have met this child. I needed to know her. I needed to be her mother. She is, in every way my daughter.

I would rather be called funny than pretty.

I'm not proud of this, but I had a lot of misconceptions about American foster care. To me, foster care meant that a child would be placed with you, then taken away. I didn't want to go through all of that.

What I wish I had, is that I wish I was a little more Greek, in that I wish I could lose my North American driven attitude and that I could be a little bit more poetic and laissez faire.

I was in a fertility situation publicly, so I disappeared. I was very satisfied just being to able to creatively express myself with writing. The white hot publicity that came from 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' was appreciated but not sought, so I was happy to walk away from it and then write.

I did go through a bit of a dark time during the years I was trying to be a mom. But I'm basically a very positive person.

Let's face it: Russell Crowe is fat and no one ever talks about it.

Socially, the issue of men's weight is simply not a big deal. Let's face it: Russell Crowe is fat, and no one ever talks about it. Alec Baldwin just orders his suits a size bigger, and we continue to swoon.

My daughter is a preschooler but I have only known her for a while. She is adopted.