Everybody's got a dud. You can't get out of it. That's the price of admission: you'll get some duds. You'll get some things where you missed a little. It's a crap feeling when you're going through it. But the main thing is as long as you're not doing anything for cynical reasons, then you'll be okay.

Greta Gerwig

Categorized in : Long Feelings Cynical

You keep learning how to let go and to live the life that you actually have, as opposed to the life you thought you were going to have.

Greta Gerwig

keep-learning live-life letting-go

I like movies about women behaving badly, because women behave badly just like men, and we're not always adorable and cute about it.

Greta Gerwig

adorable cute men

Let your characters talk to each other and do things. Spend time with them - they'll tell you who they are and what they're up to.

Greta Gerwig

end-times spend-time character

I’m not saying that everyone needs to be celibate, but you don’t need a romance to complete a story about a woman

Greta Gerwig

romance stories needs

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

Greta Gerwig

instinct plans done

I feel like most people aren't either/or, they're both/and. You're both magnanimous and petty. You're both kind and cruel. You're never just one thing.

Greta Gerwig

kind feels people

I like things that look like mistakes.

Greta Gerwig

mistake looks

I think when you're a teenager, you always feel as if life is happening somewhere else - it certainly isn't happening to you. And then you get to the place where you think your life is supposed to be, and you look around and realize it doesn't exist.

Greta Gerwig

teenager realizing thinking

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

Greta Gerwig

nyc cities new-york

You feel sadness for time passing. New York is a city that keeps reinventing itself, and I love it so much.

Greta Gerwig

sadness cities new-york

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

Greta Gerwig

i-had-a-dream work-out dream

I like people who love books and movies and art and want to talk about it all the time, because that's basically what I want to talk about. Intellectuals that are funny.

Greta Gerwig

book people art

I think... I love Los Angeles. 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.

Greta Gerwig

los-angeles world thinking

I love New York, but it's a rough city. It's not dangerous now the way it was in the 70's or the 80's, but it's still a rough city. It's hard to hack it there. Life is harder than it is on the West Coast. To be able to deal with that, you have to have a lot of aspirational feelings pinned on being there.

Greta Gerwig

life-is-hard cities new-york

I like acting and things when I like the writing. If I don't like the writing, I don't like acting. I think in some ways everything starts for me from the place of writing.

Greta Gerwig

acting writing thinking

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 like a lot of structure and a lot of lines, but then within that I make room for things to happen that you couldn't have predicted.

Greta Gerwig

film mistake thinking

There's no such thing as cheating when you're 18. That's just true. I'm very endeared by this notion of the way adolescents practice being grown ups and practice for adult morality. I remember when I was 15 and people were starting to date and someone cheated on someone. They'd say, 'He cheated on her. You know what they say, once a cheater always a cheater.'

Greta Gerwig

cheater cheating people

As a kid, I was a big reader. 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. I would read all night. My mom would come into my room and tell me I had to go to sleep, so I would hide books under my bed. At first I had a tough time getting through novels, so I read plays, because a play is generally shorter and has all those tools for getting people hooked early on.

Greta Gerwig

good-life mom book

You don't need love and sex in films

Greta Gerwig

film sex needs

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.

Greta Gerwig

creating character thinking