Zoe Kazan Quotes

My hero is Michelle Williams, who I grew close to when we did ‘Meek’s Cutoff.’ She’s an extraordinary actor and mom.

I do feel like I have the superpower of not caring about my body as an actor.

I think action should be revealed through character, so if you have a plot problem, it’s probably a character problem.

I read a lot of plays as a kid, but I didn’t see that many plays, so I feel better-versed in film history and film structure. I just think it’s easier to think in pictures.

I wasn’t raised in a family that cared about how you look. The fact that I have made my living in acting, where that matters, that really feels antithetical to me as a person.

And when I get bored, it’s like the worst parts of me come out. I really veer to self-destructive tendencies quickly.

If I’m not working, I don’t feel complete.

Maybe this is a way of gaslighting myself, but I think of it this way: In certain circles, my grandpa was considered to be one of the seminal directors of the 20th century. I’m never going to be that. So I might as well do whatever I want.

I find playwriting to be incredibly difficult compared to screenwriting. Part of it is that I grew up watching movies and not watching plays.

Writing-wise, I like to have a lot of things on the burners at once, because when I hit a wall, I like to move on to the thing I haven’t hit a wall on.

I think movies have much more magic than the theater. Theater can be a magical experience, but movies thrust their subjectivity on you in a more profound way.

I will be a broken record for justice.

I always wrote. My parents are writers. It just seemed like something people did.

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

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

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

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 love bad movies, whereas going to the theater for me is a painful experience. I think it’s really hard to sit and watch actors do something live and have it not go well.

I almost never write because I want something from my audience. Almost everything I’ve ever written, I’ve written because I feel like I have to write this or I’ll die. Like, this has to come out of me.

I don’t like pretentious films or pretentious people.

That moment in ‘Broadcast News’ where Holly Hunter is told how great it is to be the smartest person in the room, and she cries and says it’s awful – I definitely have moments like that sometimes, moments when introspection and drive can be lonely-making. And it doesn’t help that I have a partner who is very work-oriented.

I want to derive pleasure from this planet and put pleasure back into it.

I think film writing, you’re thinking in pictures, and stage writing, you’re thinking in dialogue. In film writing, it’s also, you only get so many words, so everything has to earn its place in a really economical way. I think for stage writing, you have more leeway.

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.

I never wanted to be a playwright.

I’m klutzy, and I don’t embarrass easily.

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.

When my first play was produced, I had this sudden feeling that I feel powerful. Like, the next time I go into an audition room, and it’s me and the same eight girls as always, I will have this thing that no one can take away from me. They can see us all as interchangeable. But I am not interchangeable.

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

And then the really awful thing is that at the end of the day after crying and experiencing things, then you look at what you’ve written and you’re like, ‘Hmm, there’s half a page that’s good here.’ Then you throw out everything else.

People are always asking me – because of my family – if I ever feel pressure or feel like I have something to live up to. And having that in the back of my head, I’ve just learned to be really brave even in the face of feeling ill-prepared.

I took a writing class in college, liked it, and my first year out of school I couldn’t get a job, so I wrote a play.