Quotes from Zoe Kazan

I love to walk around New York. Honestly, that's like the best thing, to walk over to Park Slope and go visit my friend Betty and take her dog out in the park or go walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. I really dig being outside and getting to see everybody in the street.

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

Nothing's going to come to you by sitting around and waiting for it.

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 will be a broken record for justice.

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.

When I look back, I can say that the summer when I was 19 was a formative time for me. But at the time I just thought I was making tofu every night for dinner and going to work.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

We all have our essential nature. If you're good with numbers, you don't even know you're good with numbers because that's how your mind works.

It's a good thing I learned some humility and perspective as I got older.

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

I never wanted to be a playwright.

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

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

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 don't feel like I have a super straightforward relationship with the idea of fame. It makes me sort of level things out in my own brain almost immediately when I meet someone.

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 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 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.