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

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" 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. "

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

Self-Destructive

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I never wanted to be a playwright. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I've always really been interested in the Pygmalion myth and both what it has to say about creativity and what it has to say about relationships between men and women. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "