Greta Gerwig

“I'd applied to graduate school for playwriting, and I got rejected by every school. I felt that theatre was closed but that, when it came to film, the door was very slightly ajar. If I have any virtues, it's that I'm good at walking through doors that are slightly ajar.”

“I feel like I'm an actor that likes to have lots of points of connection.”

“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 love musicals. I grew up on musicals.”

“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.”

“When I was a kid, I used to do my homework in the living room, where there was a picture window. I was hoping that someone would walk by and see me looking very studious in my living room.”

“Working is not instantly rewarding. It's a long process, and it's much easier to just feed whatever dopamine cycles exist in your brain in instant gratification ways. I get it; I do it.”

“Specifically with directors I'd worked with, and even some that I haven't, they were all incredibly generous with me, having really long conversations about what they felt was useful as tips.”

“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.”

“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 love big, sprawling movies where there are too many characters, and people get introduced halfway through, and you're like, 'Wait, who are these people?'”

“I love writing, and I think I'm kind of a workaholic. I'm happiest when I'm working.”

“I sound like an old man when I talk about the Internet, but I am actually worried about what it's doing to our brains and our sense of connection.”

“There are a lot of love stories in 'Maggie's Plan,' but the deepest, truly romantic one is between Maggie and her daughter.”

“I was very serious about ballet until the age of 12, at which point my body changed, and it wasn't quite right.”

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

“Mike Leigh is my all-time favourite writer/director/creator.”

“I'm, like, the only actor in New York who's never, ever been on any 'Law & Order.' And I've auditioned for so many. The sad thing is I love 'Law & Order.' I'm really obsessed with it. And they always said to me, 'You seem like you're making fun of the material.'”

“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 really interested in trying to tell stories about women that don't involve romantic components. That's so much a part of the way we feel about female characters and their needs that it feels like it's built in - but I'd like to find a way that it's not. There are so many more stories than that.”