Quotes from Gaby Hoffmann

The early part of my career was the 1990s, and I was living in New York working as an actor. It was the world I was in. A lot of companies had a great deal of money.

I don't know if I'd say I feel green, but I'm getting to know myself as an actor now in a way that I never did as a kid.

The biggest issue that we have to contend with is campaign finance reform.

My mother certainly never altered the topics of her conversation based on children being present.

I got into cooking and I went and cooked in Italy. I became a doula for a while. I built stone walls one summer, and I read a lot, and I swam a lot, and I spent a lot of time thinking.

There's a lot of improv in 'Girls'.

I went to school to study literature and writing, even though I didn't end up really doing that in the end.

I just wrapped a new show for Amazon called 'Transparent.'

Playing dysfunctional characters or crazy characters is only fun if they're well written. So I have been lucky enough to be asked to play crazy people who are very well written.

My mom was a single mother, raising my sister and me. My mom has an incredible talent for living in the world without traditional structure, and her friend, who was in advertising, put me in a commercial when I was five. It was just to make money.

Here in America, just as we see such incredible progress happening in one state, we see another state passing absolutely disgusting and oppressive laws against the rights of all sorts of people - transgender people, gay people, women.

I was obsessed with the idea of going to college. And I took many years off after that, so I sort of missed the weird, crazy transition that was what making movies was in the nineties to what's happening now.

Every scene is on the table to collaborate on, to pick apart, to try a million different ways. Usually, what ends up occurring in the end is something that no single person knew would happen or had planned for.

I met Jill Soloway at Sundance a couple years ago. I was there for 'Crystal Fairy', and she was there for 'Afternoon Delight'. She reached out and wanted to get together.

The amount of attention and sensitivity and education that we're getting in terms of specifically the transgender community is great, and certainly that's new to me. But it's not incredibly unfamiliar. I grew up in downtown New York in the '80s.

It was like I lived in a little suburban neighborhood in the middle of New York City because I could run around barefoot or, you know, completely independently from a very young age in the safety of this building where I knew everybody and where I had friends on every floor, and I knew the bellmen in the lobby.

I don't think it should be allowed for people to start working at a young age and not take the time to just be living as themselves in the real world, especially now in this new age of new media and the obsession with celebrity. I think it's a real crime.

I thought of myself as an adult trapped in a kid's body. Had I known what adulthood was like, I would have embraced childhood a little more.

I think I happened to work with sort of a bunch of slightly difficult male directors when I was a kid. I've since worked with lots of male directors that I love, so I no longer see the distinction gender-wise.

If somebody smiles at me on the street, I'm like, 'Hi, have a nice day!'

I think that every young person is a little mentally ill, you know? If we're not totally shutting down, we're all a little bit mentally ill in our twenties and maybe into our early thirties.

I just try to show up and be relaxed and present and honest. And that's my only trick. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Honestly, sometimes it really doesn't work.

I didn't intend to introduce food so early, but she became very interested at about 5 months, and I just gave her whatever sort of nutrient-rich food I had. Her first food was smoked trout.

It's hard to live in a blind and aimless - or dishonest, rather - narrative when somebody in your family is going farther toward - or at least think they are and say they are - their true self.