Quotes from Greta Gerwig

I'm all for the banalities of life and humiliation and everyday tragedies, but I also think people have big moments, and they have bigness in them.

I think it's a great tragedy of childhood that you only really appreciate it once it's done: it's very hard to feel appreciative of the gifts you have until you're gone.

The transition from tiny movies to less tiny movies to really big movies has been actually quite seamless in a lot of ways as far as my experience of acting in them.

I'm just a relationship girl. I fall in love and I usually have long relationships. I like getting to know people well and having substantive, long relationships.

I love big, sprawling movies where there are too many characters, and people get introduced halfway through, and you're like, 'Wait, who are these people?'

I'm really interested in trying to tell stories about women that don't involve romantic components. That's so much a part of the way we feel about female characters and their needs that it feels like it's built in - but I'd like to find a way that it's not. There are so many more stories than that.

I'm, like, the only actor in New York who's never, ever been on any 'Law & Order.' And I've auditioned for so many. The sad thing is I love 'Law & Order.' I'm really obsessed with it. And they always said to me, 'You seem like you're making fun of the material.'

I've made so many films in New York. There was an assumption I think a lot of people had that I am a New Yorker, that I am from New York, and I always felt like nothing could be further from the truth.

I lived for two years with six girls in an apartment that was built for three people, and it had no heat. We would sleep in our coats and in sleeping bags. And it was great.

Making movies is a hard thing, and it's slow. So you can glorify the product, but the process is difficult no matter who you are.

I think something about high school students being snobby about how much they have or don't have is particularly absurd because it's not theirs. It's their parents'. So to feel quite good about yourself because you've got the fancy house and car doesn't make any sense - you didn't earn any of that.

There are a lot of love stories in 'Maggie's Plan,' but the deepest, truly romantic one is between Maggie and her daughter.

I feel like every year there's a thing about 'not enough roles for ladies!' and, then, also an article, like 'The Year of The Woman.' I think that we all just know in our hearts they're underrepresented. But that doesn't mean that there aren't amazing moments.

Mike Leigh is my all-time favourite writer/director/creator.

From Rebecca Miller, I took the idea that the director needs to arrive every day an hour ahead of everyone else and walk through the entire day.

I thought movies were handed down by God. I knew that theater was made by people because I saw the people in front of me, but movies seemed like they were delivered, wholly made, from Zeus's head or something.

I'm not goal-oriented so much as I'm constantly aware of what I'm passionate about, and I'm constantly updating the list. I envision many possible futures for myself where I could be happy, so I just try to keep my passions alive.

I loved 'Moonlight.' I thought it was really beautiful. Really great.

I like movies about women behaving badly, because women behave badly just like men, and we're not always adorable and cute about it.

I'm not really capable of memorizing stuff without moving around, that's how I do it.

I love musicals. I grew up on musicals.

One of the great advantages of my time spent in movies and in basically every role possible, both in front of the camera and behind the camera, that I've gotten to see all these different ways that people work and the way movies are constructed from the inside out, from beginning to end.

I think being attracted to mistakes is one of the things that film can capture in a way that theater can't. Film can capture a moment of spontaneous life that will never be captured again.

I think as an actress, I prefer having a character on the page. It allows you to be more invested in actually creating a whole person. It's easier when you're not trying to come up with your next line on the spot.