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" 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. "

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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

" It was very hard for me to come back to a place of feeling normal about food and about my body. And then, when I came to the other side of it, it felt like something was gone. An exorcism. I still experience the same chemical swings and moods and pain, but I'm much better at dealing with it than I was at 18. "

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

Zoe Kazan

Parents

People

" I don't have a lot of patience for boring arthouse movies. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Zoe Kazan

You

Living

" 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. "

" 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. "

Zoe Kazan

Talk

Living

" I think a famous parent is really different from a famous grandparent. My parents are very successful, but no one knows who they are, and they live a completely grounded, homey life. I'm friends with the Gummer girls, whose mum is Meryl Streep, and that feels from the outside like a different kind of burden. "

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

" 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 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

" I never wanted to be a playwright. "

" People really do make the assumption that I had some weirdo Hollywood upbringing, but my parents are incredibly down-to-earth people who worked really hard to raise us in a way that was health. "

" You set up the story, but the characters start talking, and they go places that you didn't expect. You have to follow. "

Zoe Kazan

Start

Story

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

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

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

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

Zoe Kazan

Luck

Mad

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

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

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" In New York you can just walk out and be among people. You're on the subway among people, you go to cafes, you can talk to people. "

" 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. "