Jill Soloway Quotes

I used to think that, when I was a director, I would have a very specific vision of what everything would look like, but now I am more of a camp counselor.

I've noticed that women are always punished for their sexuality in popular culture.

Normally, I think the people you would use on your first film, it would be a real struggle to bring them with you onto your television show. I just brought every single person with and expanded my little indie film world.

There are a whole bunch of people - Republicans or sports fans or reality TV fans - who probably would never have recognized that they have trans people in their world. Caitlyn Jenner really is thinking about the movement and saving lives, so I know that her intentions are honorable.

It's a struggle every day to get people to invest financially in portrayals of women that aren't satisfying to straight white men.

If there's a woman who is exhibiting her femininity or performing her femininity, it's always seen as meant to pull in the male gaze.

For clothes, I like this little store on Fountain, Matrushka Construction. Beth Ann Whittaker and Laura Howe make amazing things. You can get a designer skirt with cool embroidery for 40 bucks instead of $400 or $4,000.

I think of myself as a producer. As a producer and as a showrunner, I already understand what it meant to gather people into a room and step back, to create the boundaries of 'everything's okay' to allow TV writers to go to their craziest places.

The network shows have this very commercial voice that you have to adhere to, and the cable shows, it's kind of like winning the lottery. The independent film world is a world you can actually get to. You can get the under-a-million-dollar film by finding a good cast and financing.

My interest in community is what fuels my work as a writer, more than just wanting to write or just wanting to have a TV show.

I have never wanted to claim I know what is best for Israel.

Fear of anti-Semitism almost is part of our religion. Throughout time Jewish people have experienced traumas that we relive in a lot of the things we celebrate.

A lot of the people I know connect through working. We're all so ambitious. Sometimes my friends will say, 'I want to hang out with you.' And I just go, 'Well, let's do a project together.' That's the only way I can.

My purpose as an artist is to heal the divided feminine in our culture. Well, okay wait, that sounds incredibly cheesy and like something a massage therapist might do at Esalen.

My experience as a Jewish American has often been as a spectator of one-sided conversations, or more like monologues, about Israel, Jewish History, Jewish identity, etc. Although there are profound divisions amongst Jews on all of these topics there are not many opportunities for deep and thoughtful dialogue about them.

If you go to Europe, public bathrooms have any-gender sink areas and stalls for everyone to use. This is completely reasonable. It potentially involves the destruction of the urinal industry, which I think people would be happy to see go away.

I'm a minimalist Jew, but on Friday night, I celebrate Shabbat. At sundown, we light candles, say the blessing, and I don't turn on my computer for 24 hours.

On Sunday morning, it's Brooklyn Bagels on Beverly Boulevard. We get them hot. Then we walk some of the famous Silver Lake steps or hike in the hills to the highest vantage point to see the reservoir.

It's hard enough to be a lady writer. Doubly hard to be a funny lady writer.

Along the way, female filmmakers will have the feeling that they're not good enough. And that's really just a result of being "otherized" from the moment they're born. Keep an eye out for all those insecurities, and even expect them. Borrow white male privilege and just move through the world as if it was created for you. You have to kind of talk yourself into an imaginary space where the world is on your side and expects you to speak and wants you to speak. You have to create that space for yourself over and over again. Every hour sometimes.

I think, because of the Internet, we're not looking at the very, very narrow channels for distribution that there used to be.

If you're female, and you want to express your femininity, you're actually demonized in the 'Free To Be ... You And Me' generation.

The inbox is always open in my brain, and anyone can get in any time and access me. Turning it off is taking back control. I decide who gets in. It's about emotional privacy, having a self.

Many of the trans women who are in our world are also in Caitlyn's Jenner world. And yes I've definitely spoken to her multiple times, talked to her, socialized with her. It's a small community when all is said and done, the trans community in Los Angeles. So everybody really knows each other and everybody's in contact.

Femininity in and of itself - and the feminine - can be not only privileged, but honored or worshipped.

There was an Israeli artist who was in grad school with me. I remember trying to get to know him on a more personal level. He had moved to the Fairfax area, not realizing that it's a super Jewish part of L.A. He told me, I don't understand why American Jews feel this connection with me. I was embarrassed because I was feeling that connection with him, too!

All writing is propaganda for the self.

Someone will say to me, Oh that's so Jewish to interrupt. I say to myself, okay, is that code for you hate Jews? Or am I just being paranoid?

The first time that I saw people actually make the thing that I wrote was my first episode of 'Six Feet Under.' It was called 'Back To The Garden.'

There are multiple shows of record about a late-transitioning patriarch and how the kids are affected, and there are multiple narratives. That narrative on "Keeping up with the Kardashians," the answer is, they're pretty much fine. It's the same sort of story we were telling which is, you know what? Everybody's okay.

At East Side Jews, we can take a risk because it isn't all about the rules. I started it to create a space for all those people who wouldn't go to temple because they were scared of getting the rules wrong.

I'm a naturally open person - some might say radically open.

For me to be able to punch above my weight creatively, to actually take a stand for what I was doing, I had to take on everything. I had to be the person who says, 'I wrote it. I directed it.'

It will feel boring when you're bingeing.

I always love the soapy conflicts between somebody's family of origin and their new family - 'Do I have Thanksgiving at my husband's parents' house, or at my parents' house?'

I was talking to my friend who's Israeli and she said that from the moment you're born, you're taught to hate the Palestinians. That's it. That's your life. That's what you learn from day one.

There are times when folks will point out certain characteristics I have, like me being an interruptor, and attribute them to my Jewish identity.

From the moment you say 'action,' this is the fun part - things should happen that surprise you, excite you, scare you, turn you on, make you laugh. If things aren't surprising you, when you say 'cut,' whisper things to the actors that will make them do things that do surprise you.

In my own work I am invested in art as a way to break through impasses, whether those impasses are personal, social, or political.

We grew up watching Woody Allen and Albert Brooks movies, and we see this neurotic, annoying, unlikeable male at the center of a story, and people root for him anyway. I think that's really what we have been craving as women is the hero who doesn't look perfect and doesn't act perfectly.

Whether you're writing television or movies, at some point you're going to encounter a male executive or investor who's going to say, 'I don't like that woman. She's unlikable.' And often, it's literally for being a regular human woman as opposed to an attracting human woman.

I had seen "Force Majeure" and I just love that movie so much. And I really wanted to artistically give a little hello to the filmmakers, and that kind of back and forth dialogue between artists that say, "I loved your movie. I was influenced by your movie. If I didn't have this job, I wouldn't be thinking of that. Do my TV show and then one day I'll make a movie where I can play with some of the visual themes in "Force Majeure."

I've been playing with this idea in my mind that the hero's journey that we're all taught as screenwriters may resonate more specifically for male protagonists and maybe even male viewers.

If you're in a room and can be seen by actors, you need to understand that you can be felt by them.

So many features at Sundance seemed to be powered more on the director's need to be a director than any particular story.

I was running the show on 'United States of Tara' and 'How To Make It In America' where I could say, 'Okay, I'm in charge of everything now.' But it still wasn't my show.

I love the Army-Navy surplus store Surplus Value Center. They have really good long underwear and multicolored bandanas, cool camo jackets, and really, really scary-looking knives. If you're into that sort of thing.

There's always been something about Jeffrey Tambor, not only as an actor but as a person, where his ability to embody a sort of very dignified feminine way of being just - this was just very clear to me.

I'm a fan of Louis C.K., I'm a fan of Lena Dunham. I love shows about people that other people would consider unlikable, or, like, the work of Woody Allen and Albert Brooks.

In the little travel I've done to other countries, the Jews there embraced me saying, Come to our house, come and have Shabbat with us. Jews in the Diaspora. I didn't imagine an Israeli traveling to the U.S. would feel this intensity of a forced relationship.

As much as possible, I put my family first.

Being pretty ... I'm just confused about it. I mean, I love getting my nails done, but I also like dressing like a boy. I think I feel most myself when I'm mixing femininity and masculinity. Like, fifty-fifty.

I'm very aware that just driving blindly towards money won't get me anything. I drive blindly towards making the world a better place.

It's really easy to be funny. You get a lot of funny people in a room, the show is funny.

By recognizing your own vulnerability you can recognize and identify with the vulnerability in others.

My sister and I are incredibly close, and we created together from childhood through the time we spent in Chicago at the Annoyance Theatre.

The more horrible the truth that you admit, the better you connect. You have to tell the truth.

Perfection would be something that you see in 'Architectural Digest.'

I think kids in general are much more capable of understanding the idea of being transgender than adults.

Something I've really been wanting to do, ever since 'Six Feet Under' ended, was create my own version of this idealized writer's room as well as the ideal family.

After 'Nikki' and 'Steve Harvey,' I had written on a show called 'The Oblongs,' which was pretty well respected and had a lot of 'Simpsons' writers on it. So I was a TV writer with an interesting voice at that moment.

I think I've always had that struggle my whole life, of feeling a little bit more gender-neutral, feeling more comfortable as a creative person when I'm dressed like a boy, when I'm dressed more masculine.

When I went to Sundance for 'Afternoon Delight,' I came back feeling like I wanted to take my experience that I learned from directing and bring that into a series.

I've been writing about misogyny for 20 years and trying to understand what femininity means for my entire career.

I'm glad that Jewish kids are taught about the Holocaust and other stories in our history, but I wonder if there are ways that this information and narrative can be transmitted differently.

I love a kind of shambling outsider protagonist who always feels like they're 'other.'

Normally, you cast a pilot, and you have to make compromises about being political about who you cast.

One of the things that feels so challenging is how questioning Israel and the idea of a Jewish state somehow opens the door for other sorts of questions - and wounds.

There's something about the kind of unconditional wild joy of creating that you have with your siblings that I am always trying to get back to.

Many of our holidays revolve around traumas that happened to our people and how we must remember them in specific ways. The way these stories are told and what we take away from them can change, and do in certain contexts, but overall I am not sure whether Jews want to let go of the narrative of the victim.

Sometimes it seems like America is the Christian and Israel is the little Jew they love in this fetishistic way. Like, you're my little sister and I'll kick anyone's ass that messes with you. But when we're alone and no one's looking I'll harass you.

Some of you guys are going to boo, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't like dogs.

You have to totally change the way that society's structured in order to being to heal.

I like to create a community where people want to come and have a good time and do their best work.

I'm always going for truth and honesty.

I've always wondered what it means to the Republican Party to be pro-Israel. My husband says that is is because certain sects of Christianity need Jews in Israel for the second coming.

I noticed that people were craving a way of reinterpreting tradition and of being Jewish without joining a synagogue.

I wouldn't necessarily say that 'Alpha House' or 'Betas' embodied a particular vision of Amazon of the kind of brand or programming they were gonna do. I think those were the first lucky creators who hit it right for them.

In most shows, there's usually a hero or a protagonist, and even if there are multiple heroes or protagonists, most shows try and make it so you really always know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.

I've always been really interested in how people's identities are shaped by where they come from and how they want to get away from where they come from.

It's really just a freedom that we have with Amazon to push ourselves creatively. It allowed me to say, you know, okay this is going to be a little half-hour film here to start the season.

People who don't have experience setting healthy boundaries, they have secrets instead.

There is a real comfort with the position of the victim, which can either result in true empathy or deep paranoia.

On some sets, if a helicopter goes by, what would normally happen is that somebody would go, 'There's a helicopter. Stop.' I'd never stop for a helicopter. I am always trying to make sure that the machine is in service to the actors.

Most people privilege the technology, almost as if actors are in service to the machine.

I just feel like content is content; people want to see it resonate.

Every project is a race between your enthusiasm and your ability to get it done. Go fast. Don't slow down. A year from now, new things will interest you.

If you can laugh with your friends over something, you own it.

Years of my life were lived knowing that I'd get a book out of them one day.

For me, when I'm not working, the day goes by so fast. I never have enough time - getting a manicure, getting a pedicure, getting my workout in, making sure that I ate healthy. Those things can become treacherous to the mind.

I was the kind of Jew who'd be in a bar, somebody would say it's Yom Kippur, and I'd go, 'Really?'

What I have to offer as a writer/director is the stuff with the feeling in it.