Quotes from Pamela Adlon

I've always been interested in how other people live their lives, which is why it's important to engage fully even in painful times. And out of that, I get to laugh.

Everything that happens to me in a day enhances my parenting.

I went from buying my own condominium and a car for myself when I was 17 on 'The Facts of Life' to not being able to pay my rent. I was at the unemployment office all the time. I had to sell my record collection just to make ends meet. And then I started getting these voice-over jobs.

There's something in my voice tonally that's like a boy, so I started being able to do boy voices and to be known as having a naturalistic boy tone without pushing it.

If I'm doing a voice-over session, like animation or something, and I'm doing three different voices, you've gotta separate them. You've gotta find the different places and do your different things.

They would call me 'The Cleaner' because I would replace boys who were real adolescents, and their voices completely changed, and they couldn't do the voices anymore.

I love that, 'mommy-shaming.' When I was a new mom, I was obsessed with how I was being perceived and trying to fit in as a mom, going to mommy-and-me classes and things like that, and never quite measuring up to 'the real moms,' the 'robot moms,' as I called them.

You can go in and out of love and still love somebody, you know? You may not like them so much on the day, but I can tell you that I don't think I've ever been so vulnerable or been so angry in my life - like, those two emotions feel so hurt or so enraged - as when you're dealing with your kids.

I'm more of somebody who'll bend over backwards for people and, you know, wait at the back of the line until everybody's taken care of. That's really my nature.

Before 'Lucky Louie,' nobody would ever cast me to play a mom or a wife; nobody ever saw me in that role, which is weird, since that's who I really am.

For me, running a set and directing has been the most rewarding thing of my life and a happy surprise, because it was never really on my radar.

I never want to waste a frame. I always look and see what I've got.

I'm trying to keep my days very efficient, and I keep my set really tight. Every single corner is active, and everybody gets to thrive in the job that they do. I don't waste people's time.

I took my daughters to see Plastic Ono Band at the Orpheum in L.A. in 2012. It was an amazing experience because she is such a revolutionary artist. Everybody was like, 'Oh, it's Yoko, it's such a joke.' But it's no joke what she did, visually and musically. It's incredible.

Wouldn't it be funny if I were a total nightmare? If I just shot 21-hour days and went over budget? But, you know, it's something I'm really careful about, because I am a mom, and also, I'm an actor. I'm a pleaser: I don't want to take up too much of people's time.

One of the things I learned in animation is that you never, ever want to start doing a voice that you can't sustain for four straight hours.

You've gotta leave enough space for your actors to bring stuff to the table and whatever the weather's doing that day or what the light's like. Things can shift, and you have to be malleable. Every day is a different feeling and a change.

Sometimes when I'm in the editing room and there's a new person there, like a music editor or a post person that I don't really know, I'm like, 'Oh, you shouldn't be in here. This is too personal - you can't watch this.' But then I'm like, hey dummy, you're about to show this to the whole world.

I like people to have their own reaction and their own take on things. And I don't like to shove my - what I want them to feel or think - down their throats. I like people to say, 'What was that about?' or 'Why did that happen?' And so, any reactions are welcome.

I learned so much from my life as an actor, as a kid actor through being an adult actor, and then becoming a writer and producer and doing animation.

My life is extraordinary because it's so normal, but it's so 'extra' for some reason.

Literally, FX is like, 'How can we foster your vision?' My vision is pretty much taking pictures of the way I see my life.

I always tell young people when I'm trying to encourage them, 'You have certain windows in your life, and you have to take advantage of it. You gotta jump through because they will shut on you.'

The first thing that I ever made was a documentary that I shot... in downtown L.A. about a group of homeless people.