Brit Marling quotes:

I didn't understand how you could be an actor if you didn't also study philosophy and study political science, astronomy. And also just go out and live life and have experiences.

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.

Modern life has gotten so strange, we all get 150 emails and text messages a day, and it's hard when things are moving that quickly to keep that sense of wonder about being alive.

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.

Writing so that I can act became a way of having not more control over my future but not having to wait for permission. You can choose yourself. Hmm, who should play this part? I nominate me!

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

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.

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

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

So at some point you realize that your life is not just going to start one day in the future, that you're living it.

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.

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?

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.

You are the sum total of the choices you make every day.

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.

Living in Cuba made me unafraid of whatever could happen to me.

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

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.

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.

Life is beautiful because it doesn't last.

One of my favorite stories growing up was A Wrinkle in Time. I loved that book. I still remember the image, so strongly, of all the kids coming out of their house at the same time, they're all bouncing a ball at the same time, and they all go back in at the same time. A Wrinkle in Time moved me deeply.

So writing became a way to get to act in things that I thought were meaningful, and hopefully write stronger roles for other women.

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.

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

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

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

When you're reading Chekov, you're in this world that he's created. I never would have created that world. I don't know anything about that time period or that setting or those groups of people or what those experiences were, but oh my gosh, it's amazing to daydream on it and put yourself there.

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.

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!

A whole film is just about arriving at a moment where you hopefully transfer some feeling to the audience.

A lot of people think, 'I'll give acting or poetry or filmmaking a try. And if it doesn't work out I'll go get a law degree, do something else that's more practical.' For me I went the reverse way. I lived the back-up plan.

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

We put limitations on the way that we think about things, on ourselves, think about all the boxes we live in, male or female, you're this age, that age, this is your job, this is not your job, everything is about getting boxed in.

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

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.

A couple of compromises in a row and suddenly you're very far way from the person you thought you were.

Science fiction has a way of letting you talk about where we are in the world and letting you be a bit of a pop philosopher without being didactic.

I think I realized very early on that you can spend a lot of time constructing a really perfect scene in final draft and just end up throwing it away because you didn't figure out that mathematics of the story first.

Human beings are flawed and complicated and messy.

I think what's so attractive about acting is that you get to live several lifetimes in one.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I think we're always looking for an excuse to connect.

I think I am looking as an actor to find ways to push myself into places I haven't been before as a human being.

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.

We put limitations on the way that we think about things, on ourselves, think about all the boxes we live in, male or female, you're this age, that age, this is your job, this is not your job, everything is about getting boxed in. I think we accept a lot of those boxes, that labeling, and the way that we perceive the world, but what even is perception? It all seems pretty flexible to me.

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

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

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?

Sometimes big budget means explosions! CGI! CGI, the possibilities are so limitless that it begins to be impractical. I'm more interested in the kinds of movies where the science fiction world has a set series of rules and you operate in it because of, maybe, constraints in the budget.

I used to be able to sit in a chair and for four hours straight in a very focused meditative way be in my own world without ay interruption. And now it's like your brain is getting so trained to check your phone, and there is like a dopamine release every time you get a text whether it's a good or a bad one. I'm really worried about what it's doing to our minds.

As an actor, you have an accumulated knowledge base. But there's also something about it that every time you really feel like you're doing it for the first time; you have no idea whether you're capable of it.

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

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

Is there anything worse than being called the 'It Girl?' By definition, there will be a new one in two weeks.

I feel like success to me is about feeling like I have done something in storytelling, where I've gotten close to articulating something intangible that I'm feeling, and I think I get closer every time, but I don't know that I've done that yet.

I'm really into rocks. I have a really serious rock collection. Rocks and feathers and shells and strange found things in nature. I have a lot of those kinds of collections.

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.

I think movies do change people's hearts.

That's the funny thing about cinema, it is an intellectual medium, but it's also sort of anti-intellectual.

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.

It doesn't happen all the time, but in the moments where you really lose yourself and you fall into this character, it's like time travel.

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.

I never want to repeat the same thing. I always want it to be different from what I've done, and to be not quite sure whether or not I can pull it off, until I hopefully do.

I feel like, when the audience connects with something, they enjoy the experience so much that they want other people to go have it. They're like, "Don't talk about it. Don't tell. Just go!" It's a nice feeling to have people coming around it that way, protecting the ideas in it, so that everyone can see it for themselves.

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.

It seems to be this hot-bed for these ideas and bringing these groups together. You find that the one thing that everybody has in common, whether they're a teenager who has run away from his parents, or a divorcee who lost her husband, is that they all have in common this feeling of searching for a meaning in their lives.

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.

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.

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.