Top 90 Quotes & Sayings by Brit Marling

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Human beings are flawed and complicated and messy.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

You know, I can't imagine 9 to 5 writing. That takes some stamina.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Life is beautiful because it doesn't last.

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

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.

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

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

For me, fantasy and speculative science fiction are the genres that feel closest to how I feel about being alive. Like, when I feel the most invigorated by just even a walk down the block in twilight, when the street lamps are just coming on and there's mist and some shadowy thing in silhouette in a window, I naturally invest all of those things with deep mythology and mystery and meaning. I think I need to believe in that version of reality because I get very scared when I don't.

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

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.

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 believe in what science fiction can do, which is it can set up simple rules that it has to follow to try to illuminate something about the present that is somewhat invisible to us.

I couldn't be a novelist for instance. It feels like a very lonely endeavor. I don't know that I could survive the solitude of that.

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.

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.

I think the first thing I thought when I got out to L.A. was just: Oh, if I want to act, I have to find a different way to go about it because the parts for girls are as dispiriting as the banking jobs. You have to really be willing to invent, I guess, a different path for yourself.

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.

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.

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.

The problem is if you play enough of parts in films that are sort of more financial products than anything or films in which the girl is a thankless, thoughtless, underwritten character along the way, you're no longer the person who had something fresh or vital to offer. I think it really does start to diminish some part of you, to put yourself through things you don't really want to be doing.

Eventually, if you're the train that's leaving the station, people will race to catch up with you. I think that's one of the things I've figured out. You can't wait for permission to act, you just do; then people are like, "Oh, look at that person just doing over there. Maybe I'll come join them."

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.

Early rejections are really tough, especially when all of your friends who you went to school with now have legitimate jobs, are getting married, having children, buying real estate, being adults. And you're still trying to figure out how to make a living doing the thing you think you love, but you're not even sure yet because you haven't even done it. It was a long road of risk and treachery.