Brit Marling Quotes

I learned from my parents the idea that, if you are devoted enough and you want to study something enough, you can really teach yourself anything.

I'd love to do anything that is outside of my comfort zone, that I've never done before. Whenever I think about something that I want to take on, I like it if it makes me a bit nervous, or makes me feel like I don't know exactly that I can pull it off.

The only thing that's important is that every day I'm waking and doing something that I really love to do.

Life is beautiful because it doesn't last.

My brain doesn't work very well, in terms of mathematics. I'm not one of those people who can just spout off numbers for things, if numbers are thrown at me.

Being a waitress can be a very brutal job sometimes, and I remember during the training, the person said to me, "The redder the lips, the better the tips," and that was like the only advice she gave me.

I always feel like the editing room is like coming into the kitchen. What kind of a meal do you make from there? It can be anything.

Then in college, besides economics, I also majored in studio art and got involved in photography and making short films and acting. But I didn't know you could make a living that way.

Any man worth his salt loves a feminist. Only men who are afraid of the feminine in themselves are afraid of women.

I get uncomfortable when people give me presents and watch me open them. I don't have birthday parties, because the idea of a group of people singing and looking at me while I'm blowing out candles gives me hives.

I've found myself at one in the morning just sitting at my desk spending an hour returning emails from the day until like two in the morning. It's ridiculous, I should be sleeping, or dreaming, or reading a novel.

The most intoxicating thing about being an actor is to surrender to a story that you never would have come up with.

I think movies do change people's hearts.

Because we're watching so many movies and are consumed by so many stories, science fiction lets you do something a bit fresh and that hasn't been seen before.

Nothing seemed as scary as waking up at 40 and realizing that I had not lived a very courageous life.

I wasn't actually very naturally good at economics. My brain doesn't work very well, in terms of mathematics.

If you play it safe every time, then you're missing the best part of acting. You haven't learned anything about your humanity.

You know, I can't imagine 9 to 5 writing. That takes some stamina.

I think there is a general unrest or curiosity about what a human future is going to be like, and whether the way we're living is even sustainable.

But, it has something to do with having belief in a human future and what that human future is. What is the future of humanity? How does this whole experiment not self-destruct with the environment and everything else going on?

People go to the cinema to be moved; they wanna laugh, they wanna cry, they wanna feel something deeply, especially if they're not feeling deeply in their own lives.

Once you play with these scenes and you're outlining it, again and again, and telling each other the narrative, and telling it to people you know, trying to make sure that the mathematics of the story work, you feel that those are in place, and the actual writing and final draft doesn't take as long.

If you came from the future and you arrived here, what would you be like? Would your immune system be depressed from that travel? Would you be well? Would you be ill? Would you be affected by micro-organisms of the time period and be hiding out in a basement? How would it all work, practically?

I think one thing for sure that you learn the more films that you make is how important it is to choose your collaborators.

When I was a kid and going to the movies I was overwhelmed by the way women were always second-class citizens in the film.

I think we're scared of intimacy - all of us, a little bit.

Here's the thing that I think about life - if you manage to get into a space where you don't need that much, where the overhead of your life is not that great and you're pretty happy and relaxed without that much stuff, you are really liberated because you never have to say yes to something because you want another refrigerator or car!

One of the great pleasures of acting is surrendering to someone else's point of view of the world - living inside a character and a story that never would have come out of your mind or heart.

I'm still a bit of a romantic and an idealist and hopelessly naive.

I think sometimes big budget means explosions! CGI! CGI, the possibilities are so limitless that it begins to be impractical.

There are so many filmmakers who are so talented, and actors and writers who work so hard, and it's really hard to let your work enter the world.

We're always just telling stories, and stories are always just approximations of the truth. It's never the truth exactly.

Having spent a lot of time trying to figure out screenwriting, I do feel moved and I want to try to write good roles for women of every age.

One of my favorite stories growing up was 'A Wrinkle in Time'. I loved that book.

I think you get to see, through the different cult members, why people are attracted to a group like this. Everyone is there for a different reason and from a different background. That was part of what was interesting for us, in researching cults and exploring it. A lot of this happens in California.

Maybe the best definition of what a great partnership or great love is when people make each other grow in a better direction than they would have grown on their own.

When you come out to L.A. to make movies or to do this kind of work, everybody is coming out on their own and you leave your tribe behind. Then, it's a question of, that was your tribe by blood, and now, what is the tribe that you're making by choice or by what you think is important? I think we were having that experience, so somehow the cult world seemed really compelling.

The litmus test for whether I want to take on a role or not is usually fear. If I'm afraid of it, then I want to do it.

I feel like I'm a much better person when I'm developing my imagination and my innocence and my vulnerability. I like that version of me better than the version where I'm just working on my analytical mind.

I totally love my job, and I wake up every day basically thinking about how can I do my job better. It never feels like a job. It's hard, and it's exhausting sometimes, but it never feels like - I would do this even if they didn't pay me to do it. That's a pretty amazing feeling.

When I'm sitting writing, I know that something works if I've made myself cry, or laugh, or have a visceral emotion.

So much of the world is being brought up on these stories that Hollywood is coming up with and exporting all over. They have so much power and influence, so it's really important that they represent women properly.

One of the things that's awesome about being an actor is that you get to do stories, live lives and have experiences that you never could have even conceived of, and that's because you're living in another writer's imagination and another director's imagination.

I'd studied theater growing up and loved that, but didn't have many examples of artists around me.

When I go into a pitch room and I'm pitching something with a writing partner, everybody tends to look at the guy, even if I'm doing a lot of the talking.