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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Zoe Kazan

Writing

Need

Play

" I think most actors jump at the chance to do something where the camera's on them all the time. "

" There's something really earnest inside me all the time. It's not a cool or fun way to be. Sometimes I would like to experience being someone who's not wired the way I'm wired. "

Zoe Kazan

Fun

Someone

" I don't like pretentious films or pretentious people. "

Zoe Kazan

Films

Pretentious

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

Zoe Kazan

Think

Movies

" 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 I'm writing, I look like a fool because the parts are moving through me and I'm crying and laughing and making faces. "

Zoe Kazan

Fool

Moving

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

" If I'm not working, I don't feel complete. "

" 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. "

Zoe Kazan

Never

Want

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

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

Zoe Kazan

Find

Difficult

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

" My schedule is completely different doing a play than it is doing a movie, and I actually think it's a much harder schedule because you've got to do it eight times a week and you've got to do it good eight times a week and with different kinds of audiences who are cold or drunk or tired, whatever it is. "

" 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. "

Zoe Kazan

I Am

Time

" I hate going to bed. I read scripts, clean, listen to the radio - I've fallen asleep to 'This American Life' more times than I can count! "

" 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 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. "

Zoe Kazan

Acting

Family

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Turning 30 changed me in ways I didn't expect. For the very first time, I felt like my life is valuable. Not my life because I'm putting something good into the world or I'm well-respected in my field, but my life as a human being on this planet for a limited amount of time. "

Zoe Kazan

My Life

World

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

" 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 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. "

Zoe Kazan

Bad

Experience

" 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. "

" When 'Ruby Sparks' came out, I had to do so many interviews where I had to explain the film and my politics. And I think there was a willful misunderstanding by some people. They thought the movie was trying to perpetrate the thing the movie was deconstructing. "

" Well, I have a sister that I'm very close with, and that relationship is probably the most intense relationship of my life to date, probably of my life, period. "

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