Sarah Paulson: If my life choices had to be predicated based on what w...

To not have any hope is where things start to get really bleak. Things are possible. The impossible can be possible.

Sarah Paulson

get-real bleak impossible

Nobody could ever say as many terrible things to me as I say to myself.

Sarah Paulson

terrible-things terrible

I remember feeling the temperature change the first time the curtain came up, the difference between the audience temperature and the stage temperature. I'll never forget it.

Sarah Paulson

differences feelings firsts

Acting is doing. The more you do, the more you learn. Work begets work.

Sarah Paulson

begets acting

My great love is the stage because I do feel like it's the place where, if you're lucky and everything is firing in the right way, you have the greatest shot at being successful. I don't mean by getting great reviews, but I mean by finding the core fo the person that you're playing.

Sarah Paulson

successful love-is mean

I could feel my body temperature - I knew I was bright red. It was so humiliating, I was so upset, and it was nothing I had planned to do. It was just one of those beautiful moments, the alchemy of acting that is so mysterious, where you sort of go, "How did that come out of me?"

Sarah Paulson

upset acting beautiful

I just don't feel that we've traveled very far in the realm of social equality. There just seems to be a little bit of unrest. And sometimes I think that happens when you really feel like something's about to change. Right before the moment of lift off, sometimes things feel a little bit unhinged, and that's what it feels like to me right now, both as a woman and just as a human on the planet as an American woman in America. I feel like we're on the precipice of change. I feel a little nervous.

Sarah Paulson

nervous sometimes thinking

I have friends say, "Don't you want to have a little you?" The jury's still out on that for me. I don't have a definitive answer, but I do know that I can look back on some of the things I've worked on and some of the things that have literally come out of my imagination and be just as proud of it as if I had created a person. I feel like that shouldn't be of any less value. It can't be because it's what my life is, and I don't want to make it smaller or more palatable just because society tells you to. If you can get comfortable with sacrifice, then you are having it all.

Sarah Paulson

sacrifice proud imagination

To me, most of life kind of lives in the grey and I don't just mean morally. I just mean kind of everything. If things were black and white it would be a lot clearer as to what to do all the time.

Sarah Paulson

black-and-white would-be mean

I personally think it would be a very liberating thing for women to allow themselves to understand that having it all incorporates sacrifice. It does mean that you can't be everywhere all the time. It does mean that your friends are not going to get all of you.

Sarah Paulson

sacrifice mean thinking

It's OK to sit in the Golden Globe room and look around and think, 'Oh, Helen Mirren's a loser tonight, so is Nicole Kidman. Meryl Streep lost tonight. Jessica Lange didn't win.' If you're gonna be in the company of losers, that's the company to be in.

Sarah Paulson

winning looks thinking

The thing I worry about for myself is I spend a lot of time alone, and another person comes around and you're like, 'What are you doing here? Get out of here.

Sarah Paulson

alone-time persons worry

There are rules, and when certain things happen, there are ceratin consequences.

Sarah Paulson

things-happen certain happens

I had gone away from Twitter because before people had been so mean to me. Talking about my lisp and my enormous forehead and all these things. I do have a lisp, I do have a forehead I know you could land a plane on, it's no mystery to me. I just didn't have the skin for it.

Sarah Paulson

land talking mean

If I had my druthers, I would be working in all different mediums, forever.

Sarah Paulson

different would-be forever

I played a lesbian reporter in 1964, who was incarcerated, and ended the series as a 75-year-old woman. And then, I was a witch blinded by acid who became the Supreme, and took my mother's energy and life, so that I could live and she would die. And then, I was conjoined twins. And then, I played a heroin addict.

Sarah Paulson

energy mother years

Anything is possible, and the truth is any human being at any given moment, no matter how good they are - not only at their job but also as a person - they're capable of anything, and it's not always a conscious thing.

Sarah Paulson

moments matter jobs

I like the ritual of putting on my makeup, putting on my costume, doing my warm-ups. I eat the same dinner every night before I go on stage. I like having something that I can count on, something that feels stabilizing for me.

Sarah Paulson

makeup goes-on night

I think it's very important for people to not judge the people you're playing. You have to find a way to love them because their story is theirs. I just don't think there would be any use in that.

Sarah Paulson

judging people thinking

I'm addicted to routine. I don't know if that's because I moved around so much as child - by the time I was 12 years old, I had lived in about 10 different places. But I like going to the theater at a certain time.

Sarah Paulson

different children years

If my life choices had to be predicated based on what was expected of me from a community on either side, that’s going to make me feel really straitjacketed, and I don’t want to feel that, what I can say absolutely is that I am in love, and that person happens to be Holland Taylor.