Quotes from Zoe Kazan

Every role requires its own set of tools, and I think, because of that, it is very hard to ever feel totally prepared or totally able.

I find playwriting really painful. I love it, or I wouldn't do it, but I don't love the theater as much as I love movies.

Sometimes I feel that the people I'm writing are more real to me than the people around me. When you take that imaginative leap, you're living so much in that world.

I think the written word is my first love. I was just a very imagination - centered child and a big part of that imaginary life came from reading.

I love to act and that's sort of my first love. That's what I started out doing.

I'm used to very low-budget situations. In 'The Exploding Girl,' we were literally changing in Starbucks because we didn't have trailers.

I really love people. I love to meet people. I'm curious about people.

I don't love the word "quirky." I think it's a word that's a catchall. It's a word that doesn't stand in empathy with the person, it stands in judgment of them. It's a very externalized word.

I can work a lot faster when I'm writing a screenplay than when I'm writing a play because, if I'm having a problem with a scene or something, I can just be writing it in a way where there's no dialogue, or find a way to make sound do the work that I want to do or a close-up do the work that I need to do.

If I ever feel that acting is just soul-sucking and I don't want to do it anymore, I could stop.

When we do something we're not proud of, a lot of people don't want to look at that, people may say "what people don't know won't hurt them."

I have mad luck. I'm super-good at games like backgammon or anything that requires rolling dice.

But my family's really close and I was interested in what Mommy and Daddy did for a living. So when Mommy and Daddy had a script that wasn't totally age inappropriate, they would let me read it. And we would talk about it.

I remember being two, maybe, and hearing my mum's typewriter in the other room and sticking my hands under the door and screaming, 'Mum! Mum!' I was so angry she wouldn't come out. I got used to it quickly.

Historically, art and music and writing and film have been one of the only tools that is effective against tyranny.

I grew up speaking Spanish. The woman who helped raise me was only Spanish-speaking, so it was one of my primary languages as a kid. And I lived in Spain for a while.

I encourage everyone to read James Baldwin and Malcom X and Aldous Huxley. To read Primo Levi. To read 'Silent Spring.' To read Toni Morrison. To read Zora Neale Hurston.

I'm a very serious person. Unfortunately, sometimes.

Anytime that I've felt uninspired, I don't force myself to sit down and write. I only do it when I feel the impulse.

I don't want to do every independent film offered to me.

I grew up in L.A., and I don't think I've seen L.A. onscreen in a way that felt real to me. There are definitely movies, but they are few and far between.

And I think the female creative urge is intrinsically biologically linked to our ability to give birth to a child, even if we've never... I've never given birth, but I feel like it's part of our psychology.

The causes for my eating disorder ran along the usual lines: depression, an inability to express my rage, a desire to exert control, a desire to feel less, a desire to have my body express the things my voice could not. That, and I had gotten in the habit of believing it was better to take up less space.

If I didn't find art valuable, I would stop doing my work and only work for justice.