Marisa Tomei quotes:

I feel like theatre gives me the grounding, and keeps me alive, basically. Film gives me the thrill, and it's like a one night stand. But I do enjoy being around people who love it so much.

I love being outside and getting fresh air.

You express different energies at different times in your life.

I really don't like when things are all polished and perfect - the perfect love story and the hair is perfect.

I'm the luckiest women because I do get to spend a lot of time with Gloria Steinem , and not necessarily talking about the show [ HBO's Ms.] - but talking whatever she's working on, and going to events with her.

I think the fantasy of being a movie star is more powerful than the reality. So, for me, even if it's not a great film or a great play I'm doing, to know that you went for it. You had an experience that made you grow artistically and personally. What's really satisfying is knowing that you did a good job.

I'm not that big a fan of marriage as an institution and I don't know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings.

Not to get overly psychological about this, but it's probably why I became an actress in the first place: for that kind of freedom and refuge, as well as for the fact that I just love acting so much.

I grew up on musicals, and I know they are quite the thing now, but I'm actually a little indignant, because I started taking singing lessons years ago - I put the time in!

I did ask Larry David, "How did I get so lucky? How am I here [Seinfeld]?" He just said, 'Well, when you say your name over and over it just has a really strong rhythm: "Marisa Tomei. Marisa Tomei."

All of us have read the stories about young people in Hollywood and all the challenges they have to confront there, and I think that artistically, I really didn't understand the commercial side of the film business, so I went back to a purely artistic setting.

A man like Wilde was not free to live out of the closet as a homosexual, and women in general were not able to be truly themselves; there was no place for a woman's voice to be heard or for her to express her sexuality.

I find that protein wakes up my brain and gets me ready for the rest of my day.

I am really not of the school of naturalism. I like style, and you can use more style in theater than in film roles. I love to sink my teeth into a part.

Comedy is what I really want to do and propel.

I'm not that big a fan of marriage as an institution, and I don't know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings.

A lot of times being "completely objective" means seeing the world through a patriarchal eye.

I don't prefer much of film over stage... The only thing I prefer is the paycheck.

I'm always dying to do more comedic parts, I love it when I get to do something really overblown like Crazy, Stupid, Love that can just be silly. There have always been hilarious women, but I love that they are getting more and more attention.

I can't tell stories to save my life. I like to have fun, and I go out and have a lot of fun. But I'm not really an entertainer that way. I'm much more shy.

I was exposed to the arts, but there was no one in my family who was an artist.

You have your structure, but within it, it gets fuller and you can highlight other parts of the performance.

I'm a person who has to eat! I graze every few hours.

Singing really oxygenates your blood. You stretch your lungs and take in much more air into them than before. It's really good for your health.

Her [Aunt May] values and his [ Spiderman] traumas are kind of what's defined him as a young boy and now that he's becoming a young man, she's there to provide that safe place where he can still be a kid if he needs to be, or know that he has a home base as he's going through all these physical changes. So as long as those essentials are there, we can work on finding the character together.

I am really touched and surprised that your generation [of millenials] feels that way, and I'm really happy the work stands up. But that show [Seinfeld] is going to stand up for all time: it's one of the greatest things that has ever been written, and still speaks to the quirks of being a human being no matter what the era.

I never got into coffee.

I prefer to express myself physically, or non-verbally. I prefer just to react without having a lot of dialogue.

I see my parents a lot more often, but what I liked about the challenge of my part was I got to have those little kid feelings of being the daughter, and then switching and being a Mom.

I was taking a lot of eyedrops three times a day and I realized I should have it checked out, that's when I was told I had a type of Chronic Dry Eye. Restasis has really worked for me and made my life easier. They're also partnering with Guide Dogs for the Blind, it's a beautiful thing where they're donating a dollar for every quiz taken on Restasis.com. It provides the blind and visually impaired with dogs, and it doesn't have government funding so what Allergan is doing really makes a difference. I'm so happy to be supporting that very inspiring organization.

In cultural history, the civil rights movement came before the women's movement.

It's hard to transfer one person's type of comic timing or approach to another person's. It's something you innately hear like a rhythm in your ear.

It's really fun working on this Marvel movie [ Spiderman]. The essentials of Aunt May are that she's helped raise Spiderman and she's his moral compass.

I've just been lucky. I'd like to have more choices, and I'd like to have a leading part.

I've sought out several dance teachers-shaman-like women dance teachers-to get in touch with the mystical through movement.

Letting journalism be from the perspective of the journalist. It's usually a no-no, and journalists are encouraged to be completely objective.

My brother became so enamored with that film [West Side Story], that he started taking tap-dancing lessons, and I followed him and started tap dancing, and my mother and father started tap dancing - I was in a class with my family, tap dancing!

Politics itself is so unsexy, isn't it? But when the politics in creative works are really explored - not used as a vehicle - the results can be really interesting.

There were moments where people took the to streets and small rebellions, but ultimately it's a change in consciousness - so how do you capture that and bring the piece to light?

There's a pattern of the pathway opening in a certain way. We stared thinking, there's so many wonderful films about civil rights movements, but there isn't even one yet about the women's movement? It's hard to capture because it's so sprawling, and it's an ideology.

Those stories weren't being written at all - stories about women's inner lives and outer activism. We've come miles and miles, but we still don't have an equal rights amendment yet. We don't have equal pay yet. There's a lot of blind misogyny that's not personal, but institutionalized. We still have work to do, but even just looking at those old Ms. Magazines is a cool thing to do - to see how daring they were. They just went right into the belly of the beast.

We play lots of roles in our lives, but I got to do that in one movie [Parental Guidance], and ride the feelings, and it was a good challenge for me.

We would also go to musicals. So Singing In the Rain, On the Town, and West Side Story. Especially West Side Story because played that a lot before VCRs, so that would be something that would be a big deal if it came on, you caught it. So that really started, my family was not in show business at all but really loved that kind of thing.

With acting, it was really more of a general kind of experience of really just loving being in the theater.

You can't really be old in L.A., it's kind of like a crime.

I've just been really lucky to not be too much of a stereotype.