Books and theater were the way I understood the world and also the way I organized my sense of morality, of how to live a good life.

There's nothing more thrilling than watching great actors say things that you wrote and bring them to life.

I loved 'Moonlight.' I thought it was really beautiful. Really great.

I've never had a plan, I've always done things from instinct.

The more particular you make something, the more universal it becomes.

I loved the idea of dramatic art of storytelling as a way to make sense of things. It's really what I love and what I care about.

You only get one life, so you might as well feel all the feelings.

Everybody is always in the middle of their own opera.

When you're writing a screenplay, it's like you're dreaming the film for yourself again and again and again until it becomes almost like a memory before you make it.

I thought movies were handed down by God. I knew that theater was made by people because I saw the people in front of me, but movies seemed like they were delivered, wholly made, from Zeus's head or something.

There's a style in modern dance right now called Release Technique. It's based on a feeling of falling and catching yourself, and I thought it was such a good metaphor for the way life feels.

I don't really decide what the core of the story is before I write. I write to figure out what the story is. And I think the characters end up talking to you and telling you what they want to be doing and what is important to them. So in some ways, your job is to listen as much as it is to write.

I'm always interested in relationships between women. I'm always interested in how women relate to each other, whether it's a family relationship or it's a friend relationship. That's such uncharted territory in cinema.

I feel like movies are presents, and credits and fonts are bows and wrapping paper. I like everything to feel like it was given a lot of time. I hate it when I watch movies, and it seems like they just went and picked a font and, like, called it a day.

I think I've always wanted to direct, but I didn't go to film school. I was lucky enough to work in movies, and I think those became my film school in terms of acting and watching directors work and also writing and co-writing and producing.

Nobody knows what you have in you until you've done it, so I just keep pushing those boundaries, and I figure it will all come out in the wash.

I'm interested in characters that have just a touch of madness.

I think it's true of a lot of teenagers that you're convinced that life is happening somewhere else.

Making movies is a hard thing, and it's slow. So you can glorify the product, but the process is difficult no matter who you are.

When I read 'Greenberg,' I had a really strong sense if I could be any kind of writer I wanted to be, I'd be this kind of writer. And I felt like, even in my experiences, what writing I had done, even on a small scale, when it was good, it shared some quality with it.

I'm always interested in how people use language to not say what they mean.

From Noah Baumbach, I learned to have a strict no cell phone policy on set. There is nothing that bums you out more than looking over and seeing somebody on their smartphone, and that goes for actors and everyone else.

I just don't feel like I've seen very many movies about 17-year-old girls where the question is not, 'Will she find the right guy' or 'Will he find her?' The question should be, 'Is she going to occupy her personhood?' Because I think we're very unused to seeing female characters, particularly young female characters, as people.

I wrote the script to 'Lady Bird,' and it really came out of a desire to make a project about home - like, what the meaning of home is, and place. I knew Sacramento very well, obviously, growing up there, and I felt like the right way to tell a story of a place was through a person who's about to leave it.

I think it's a great tragedy of childhood that you only really appreciate it once it's done: it's very hard to feel appreciative of the gifts you have until you're gone.

I loved dance.

Courage doesn't grow overnight. It can be a long process.

I knew I wanted to be involved with theater or film in any way I could, either as a writer or director or actress.

Woody Allen was the reason I wanted to move to New York City and one of the reasons I wanted to make films. I felt that I understood his films, and I love them so much. When you're starting out, certainly, you have this sense of wanting to talk back to people who have influenced you, and I always wanted to talk back to Woody Allen.

In terms of sheer pleasure, Tom Stoppard was very big for me because he is so funny and so smart, and it felt delicious reading him.

When I did plays in high school and college, I never remember memorizing my lines, but once I had blocking, I had all my lines memorized. Once I had movement associated with words, it was fine. Before I had blocking, it was just text on a page. Once it became embodied, it was much easier.

I think being attracted to mistakes is one of the things that film can capture in a way that theater can't. Film can capture a moment of spontaneous life that will never be captured again.

I thought Mia Hansen-Love was a true auteur, and I always wanted to work with her. Mia's empathy for her characters and her ability to use the language of cinema to communicate real human depth is extraordinary. She's a humanist.

I'm not really capable of memorizing stuff without moving around, that's how I do it.

I wouldn't call myself 'into the DJ scene.' I have friends who are DJs, like James Murphy. I was really into the DJ scene at his wedding. But generally, I'm not at the clubs. I've never been to a rave.

I lived for two years with six girls in an apartment that was built for three people, and it had no heat. We would sleep in our coats and in sleeping bags. And it was great.

I've never worked on anything that I haven't in some way enjoyed.

I live in New York, and I love New York as well, but I think Los Angeles is a place where if you have the right person with you, there are all these little worlds that you would never guess by just looking at the exterior of what the city is.

I was serious about ballet for a long time, but my mom got me into tap and jazz and modern and hip-hop, and I was one of those over-lessoned children.

As an actor, I just go off the director. I never ask how big the part is. I don't look at it from the perspective of, 'Is this going to be good for my career?' I just look for directors, and I think part of that is I knew I always wanted to be a director.

I don't know any woman who has a simple relationship with their mother or with their daughter.

I feel like every year there's a thing about 'not enough roles for ladies!' and, then, also an article, like 'The Year of The Woman.' I think that we all just know in our hearts they're underrepresented. But that doesn't mean that there aren't amazing moments.

I feel so part of the filmmaking community. It's amazing how much people support each other.

I didn't know the city at all, but I was so happy to be in New York I cried. I was so excited.

I had dreams, but I didn't have the sense that they would necessarily work out. They seemed very far-fetched.

Getting bad reviews or doing something that's not great is also really good for you as an actor. It also makes me feel as an actor that I've earned my stripes a bit.

I think as an actress, I prefer having a character on the page. It allows you to be more invested in actually creating a whole person. It's easier when you're not trying to come up with your next line on the spot.

We would go down to Riverside, California, which is very poor now, but that's where my grandfather grew up. He grew up during the Depression in Riverside.

The economy is rough. I think that affects everyone from big filmmakers to tiny filmmakers.

Sacramento is where I grew up, so I felt like it had not been given its proper due in cinema.