Julia Stiles quotes:

I'm going to Columbia University but I'm trying to keep that low-profile because I don't want weird people following me there. I want the experience of normal college life.

I wear everything from hip-hop baggy pants to beautiful Armani dresses. I also like to mix vintage clothing with designer pieces.

Even after such milestones as Kathryn Bigelow winning an Oscar, there still seem to be few women in leadership roles.

I was gonna throw the first pitch at a Mets game, but there was a rain delay. So I'm waiting for it to stop, and the team's manager, Willie Randolph, comes by. Now he's already intimidating to begin with. But he comes over to me and says, 'If you screw this up, they will boo you.' And I said 'Thanks.'

Of course my family and friends are incredibly valuable to me. They keep me sane, they teach me things and I love spending time with them. I think that ranking what you value is a sort of western and linear way of looking at things.

I like analyzing human behavior. It's complex. That's what keeps me going.

I took the role of Ophelia in Hamlet because she is so naive, loving, and innocent.

If I'm gong out to a club I like to have fun with it. I'll use blue or red sparkly eyeliners and glittery eye shadows. Then I'll put on some blue mascara. I focus on the eyes.

It's actually really great to be a student and an actor, because I get to do this job that I love, then just when I think my head might explode, I get to go to school where they don't really care about what magazine cover I'm on.

I was happy when I read the script [The Bourne Ultimatum ] - the first version they sent me - to see that before, there's some humanity too.

I did a different production with a different director and Bill Pullman. Oleanna - the one you saw - we were doing right after Bourne Identity or right after it came out.

I think audiences, producers and directors included, develop crushes on actors (actresses in particular) and then lose interest and move on to the next one.

Yoga has stopped me from destroying my joints after running. It slows me down. My brain and body can go into overdrive - yoga teaches me to focus on the moment and not get ahead of myself.

Sometimes I have these abstract ideas and then lose track of myself.

I think that ultimately I just have to be myself. You know, I don't do anything that outlandish anyway.

Yoga has stopped me from destroying my joints after running. It slows me down.

So I am happy to have fans, especially if it enables me to keep working. And I am really grateful when people respond to my work.

I met this homeless man who had never owned a shirt in his life. He had taken his pants and worn them as a shirt and I thought it was so creative. He was liberated from the conventions of fashion.

I tend to gravitate toward the more powerful roles. As opposed to the doe-eyed girl who bats her eyelashes and runs around in towels, you now what I mean? Because that kind of makes me want to vomit.

I always feel like a goofy little kid.

Make yourself useful, not just on a day to day basis, but as a lifetime thing.

I think women get caught up too much in having a plan - 'I'm going to get married at this age I'm going to have a kid at this age' - and then they just try to find a guy who will fit into that picture. I don't want my life to be based on that.

I am a big fan of horror movies but I had never thought that I had wanted to act in one because I don't think that actors get to do much in them. They're usually just reacting.

Being an actor is looked at like a prolonged game of dress-up. America puts movie stars on pedestals. In college, it's the flip side. I sometimes have to justify my job to my professors because they're focused on intellect and ideas.

I think I was born an artist. But the key is that I have a mom that encouraged and supported my artistic side. She still has the stick-figure drawings framed.

It's fun to stay at the Y! M! C! A!

My regular school didn't know what to do with me!

I do think that the more takes you have the more opportunity to experiment [but] at a certain point, there are diminishing returns. There's only so much variety you offer.

I worked regularly from very early on, and some of it was probably a bit premature.

I pretty much grew up in public.

The thing with the Bourne movies is that they're so big in scope and the production value is so high and it takes so much organization.

There are a handful of actors who sustain interest because it's exciting to watch them get better at what they do. I want to be one of those actors.

I really like Shakespeare a lot. The characters that he writes for females, I think, are really great and a lot more compelling than what modern writers write, which is weird because they didn't have actresses then.

It was nice that there [ in the Bourne Ultimatum ] was a reference to the relationship . It's very subtle - it's actually without dialogue. I do think it's powerful even without words.

Education is huge for me. I went to public school until I turned thirteen, and was lucky enough to afford college once I became successful as an actress.

When Paul [Greengrass] was writing, he'd send me story ideas that he had. He was particularly interested in social movements and revolutions that had been happening all over the world, and how computers and the internet had helped those movements. He encouraged me to read a book about Anonymous, the hacker group called "white hat" hackers, meaning they're driven by ideology and social disruption as opposed to just greed.

Fundamentally women and men are different.

In my worst moments, I try to think about loving instead of hating. Creation versus destruction, know what I'm sayin'?

I feel like I have a skill set, but every experience is different and there's always room for improvement.

In my early career, I look at that time as a series of trial and error and learning as I go.

I like a director that encourages me to be playful. I don't really like being restricted or controlled by a director.

I like a director who is very observant and is watching what I'm doing and noticing what I'm doing, but is giving me time to figure it out. They don't jump right in and give you a note before you've had time to really search on your own with how to do a scene.

Actors can write and produce too. Then when I was working on Jason Bourne - having had that experience - instead of going back to my trailer and being separate from everyone else, I would sit behind the monitor and watch Paul Greengrass work and be much more included in the process. That was new for me and really enriching.

I did a run of a play over the summer in a really tiny theater in New York and that was rejuvenating for me. I directed a short series for Hulu called Paloma and being in an editing room, I learned a lot about acting.

I remember seeing Janet McTeer in A Doll's House. My grandmother took me and we had seats in the very back row, but her performance was so powerful - it was very accessible. I felt like I was much closer than I was.

I am forever a romantic. I try to bring that into my work. I try not to be fooled by romance. Or work.

Bill Pullman is older than Aaron Eckhart - although I was older too - and the age difference changes the play. My perspective on those issues had changed a lot. Without going into nerdy details about that play, there was something that still stuck with me. I still had the same joy in that dialogue and David Mamet's rhythm in terms of his writing. I felt like there was still something to explore.

With film, so much is in the director's hands. Once something is cut together - unless you're in the editing room - you don't really remember what the alternatives are.

The exercise in theater is night after night you are doing the same play, but you have another opportunity to explore. It changes nightly even because of the audience and your day going into the evening of the performance. With film it's much more controlled.

My grandmother took me to a lot of theater. I was exposed to performance quite a bit - everything from Broadway to off-Broadway and dance and music as well. I was very lucky that way. It was a very rich childhood.

I think it's really special to be a part of something that people are still watching or thinking about or interested in, or remember fondly many years later. I don't think it's annoying at all.

Seeing other people in pain causes me pain.

The only thing that gets me through any type of pain, emotional or physical, is to make it worthwhile by putting it into my work.

Theater makes working in movies or TV seem like a cake-walk.

I am forever grateful that I got some training in the theater - it reduces performance anxiety.

Theater is like going to the gym for actors.

I know it sounds earnest, but I do really feel in my bones that acting is just a small part of the equation when you are making a movie. The director really is in charge. Actors are as important or unimportant as the rest of the people around them.

I used to struggle a lot with dwelling on how the day at work was, and I would dwell on my performance. Now, I'm like, "Well, that's over and done with, and I can't control the outcome, so move on." I just remember that it's entertainment I am making.

I've really turned a corner recently in terms of not taking work too seriously, so it is much easier for me to not take my work home.

I'm not good at keeping secrets. If I'm entrusted with a secret from a friend, I can do that because I'm a good friend, but I don't like having secrets, it makes me nervous.

I've always been fascinated with the idea of people paying for sex and what goes on with that and why that happens.

I kind of don't believe in actors directing themselves. Obviously some people have done it well, but I don't see how I could. It's funny that you ask, because I've just been thinking that maybe I'd rather direct The Bell Jar than act in it. It's a huge leap to go from a short to a feature, so I'm tentative - I'm like, Well, that's just so triple-type-A personality of you.

We can become very short-sighted in terms of objectives. The first thing to go during times of economic crisis and budget cuts is funding for things that are essential and not-quantifiable, like the arts. Save Big Bird

Education is huge for me. I went to public school until I turned thirteen, and was lucky enough to afford college once I became successful as an actress. I cannot believe that quality education costs as much as it does in this country. Ghetto Film School is a remarkable public high school in New York City where students get to learn to express themselves through filmmaking, and have hands-on access to equipment.

I never think of myself as an actor who takes work home with them.

It's not my job to critique the writing. I'm there to serve it. I had to figure out a way to make it work.

As an actor, you're only one little piece of the puzzle; you're fulfilling someone else's vision. If you're involved earlier on, you're kind of creating your own.