Top 132 Quotes & Sayings by Ari Graynor - Page 2

Our everyday lives exist with comedy and tragedy next to each other.

I don't have to fear that if I do more comedy I'm not going to get to do everything I want. I'll get to do my 'Yentl.'

I didn't want to study theater or go to school in the city. I wanted the all-American 'Here's your quad' college experience.

I require a lot of stimulation, and there's so much I've learned being in front of the camera, I felt like I had more to give behind it.

At the end of the day, if you're an actor, you want to act. And it's not something you can do in the living room alone. If you're a painter, you can paint at home. If you write music, you can write on your own.

As an actor, there's no faking it.

There's a lot of schlock out there.

While I'm Jewish, the Hasidic world is still foreign to me. But I do understand some of the ideas of tradition and family and faith of our shared culture.

There are a lot of female characters out there that, when they fall on hard times, they sort of stew in their fears and negativities and vulnerabilities. And there's something that's really truthful about that - when I've gone through hard times or breakups, I've spent a lot of time on my couch overeating and crying with friends, that's true.

I have the personality where, although my ego can be healthy, sometimes I also feel like people won't remember me, or they won't know who I am.

There's something innately funny and warm about being Jewish. I think it's something to be embraced and respected.

When I was kid, I couldn't wait to take the world by storm, to be a woman - beautiful, powerful, confident, sexy, thoughtful, and deep. All the things I knew I was inside... even though I was only 4.

I think a reason why actors get reputations for being crazy and neurotic is because your life task is constantly in flux.

My deepest fear about doing TV, especially about doing a network comedy, was what if it felt too surface-y? What if it felt too jokey?

I've been really interested and inspired by Nan Goldin, the photographer.

The truth is, there are so few female roles in movies. That's really limiting. As an actor, you wanna be able to sink your teeth into something. You don't want to just be the best friend. You don't want to just be the girlfriend.

I've always sort of felt like I was from another time. The '70s is more my vibe. The clothes fit me better.

People remember the last thing you did.

At 21, my career took a comedic turn when I was cast in a new Broadway play called 'Brooklyn Boy,' by Donald Margulies, which was equal parts funny and sad. I realized that the more seriously I expressed my character's feelings, the funnier the scene became.

Sometimes you can fall into bad habits on film or rest on your laurels, and you can't do that in theater. I think it's such a useful tool as a person and as an actor to go back and forth between those two mediums.

I love to cook for people. I equate food with love.

My worst nightmare when I was in school was that I would get into trouble. I never got in trouble. I was a good student.

I don't know what I would have done without acting. I officially fell into it around age 6 in a class play that reimagined 'The Ugly Duckling.' My joy in performing was so boundless, you would have thought I'd just won a Tony.

As an actor, your life is constant ups and downs. My friends and I joke that when a job ends and nothing is lined up, you have nothing to do for the rest of your life. You just ride that wave.

By 12, my body had changed, although instead of blossoming into Cindy Mancini from 'Can't Buy Me Love,' I more closely resembled Chunk from 'The Goonies.' My inside world may have been filled with a poetic and vital feminine life force, but the outside world saw and told me otherwise.

As an actor, these kinds of big-comedic-centerpiece characters is just one thing that I love to do.

The real heart of comedy is uncovering a truth about yourself or about the world that you didn't see.

I've been calling myself 'just an actor' since I was 6 years old. That's a long time.

It's an incredible thing when you are creating something in a moment with the other people on stage and with an audience, and you are all experiencing it together as it exists in that one night. It's a magical feeling.

Humans are complex, and I think in entertainment in general, it's very easy to put people in boxes.

As a kid, I watched a lot of TV.

I think 'Nick and Norah' was a huge deal for me. It was my first foray into the studio world, and that character was such a gift.

It's such a tough business. And once people see you a certain way, it's really hard for them to change their minds about you.

Don't believe anything you read on Wikipedia!

More and more, people probably associate me in this world of comedy and these confident, brassy, big ladies, which I love, but my insides and who I feel like internally and the kind of work that I hope to continue doing feels very different from that.

I'm such a theater geek. Most of my friends are in this community, and it's really important for me to keep doing it. It takes the ego out of acting, whereas movies tend to involve it.

Acting was the place where I could be free and feel confident.

You know what no one tells you about driving a truck? You are driving a truck. There are only side mirrors, and it does not handle like a Prius.

I'm not nearly as brave and confident in some of the ways that I think stand-ups are.

I was playing a lot of bigger, sort-of-comedic characters in slightly heightened realities, and it had been so fun and fulfilling for a long time. But it got to a point where I just felt like I didn't have that in me anymore.

Henry Winkler is the most lovable man. He is like everybody's favorite grandfather.

When I was a kid, I did dial the 900 numbers out of curiosity, but I was such a goodie-two-shoes that I immediately hung up because I didn't want it showing up on the bill.

It is mind-boggling to me that there are so few movies about female friendship, considering women make up half the movie-going population.

Women care about their friends.

Sometimes you can get stuck doing the same kind of thing over and over again, and then there's a certain moment in your life when you say, 'Wait, there's all this other stuff in me and all this other life.'

If I'm gonna stay in this world of comedy, then it has to be a really special character to me in a really smart piece of material.

I've started to get more stage fright the older I get.

I went through a little hippy dippy program at Brandeis and was bat mizvahed by the rabbi who married my parents. We celebrated the High Holidays and had the traditional Rosh Hashanah dinner.

I think the good news for me in life is that I really trust my instincts when I come to work. Maybe less in life and in love, but in work and in comedic beats, I feel pretty confident.

I think casting a show is an art form in and of itself. We're all so different - the cast is made up partly of real stand-ups, partly of actors, and then partly of just legendary actors.

As I've grown as a person and gotten to know myself more - the question of how someone becomes who they become has gotten really interesting to me.

Babies are born whole and then they go through experiences in life that chip away at some of that, and it becomes learned behavior.

With acting, I started as a kid and it was my safe space and the place where I felt the most free to be all of myself. What gets explored in our show is where that instinct starts and where it meets with career, and how that can change your path a bit.

Life is hard enough, so when you can get any joy out of it, whether it's something you do on a day-to-day basis, or the people in your life, or going to see a funny movie, there's just nothing better. That's what life is about.

There is nothing better than a laugh in life. There just isn't.

Stand-up comedy is still a very male-dominated world. You look at a set list and maybe there's one woman on there.

What I love about our show is that it's so nuanced and feels very real to me. I think how it explores creativity in general is very real.

Most people, no matter what they do, they don't think they're a bad person. The place where their actions are coming from is a complicated place and a whole personal history. I definitely think that it helped me to look at the world a little less judgmentally.

As an actor, when you're doing comedies, you're around fantastic, funny people and you hopefully have a really good time doing it.

When you look at all of the male characters on television and in film, it's not like every one of them are the people doing the right thing that you can point to as your own moral compass.