Top 148 Quotes & Sayings by Gaby Hoffmann

I have a teacher friend who gets nervous when there's $200 in her account. But at least she knows that in a week, she'll get another paycheck. I have no idea.

I think that every young person is a little mentally ill, you know? If we're not totally shutting down, we're all a little bit mentally ill in our twenties and maybe into our early thirties.

I always knew when I graduated from high school, I'd go to college. I never thought about what I was walking away from... I just wanted to study literature and writing.

There's plenty of great independent films to do, but you can't support yourself making independent film as an actress.

I basically took six or seven years off, but then I had another five or four of me not working at all because I was in school. It was really 13 years of me not working at all... I really couldn't even think about it.

I was born naked. I'm a natural. I'm a natural nude. So I've been on camera naked a lot.

I don't think it should be allowed for people to start working at a young age and not take the time to just be living as themselves in the real world, especially now in this new age of new media and the obsession with celebrity. I think it's a real crime.

My mom was a single mother, raising my sister and me. My mom has an incredible talent for living in the world without traditional structure, and her friend, who was in advertising, put me in a commercial when I was five. It was just to make money.

I was obsessed with the idea of going to college. And I took many years off after that, so I sort of missed the weird, crazy transition that was what making movies was in the nineties to what's happening now.

I didn't intend to introduce food so early, but she became very interested at about 5 months, and I just gave her whatever sort of nutrient-rich food I had. Her first food was smoked trout.

I had a world of people raising me; it was like a little village.

I grew up with artists and drag queens. These were just my neighbors and friends and the people who are raising me.

I never set out to be an actor. Again, my mother presented this job by job to me at the time, and if it sounded fun, I would say yes and if it didn't, I would say no. I always knew, since I was 7 or 8 years old, that it was a means to an end and that I wanted to go to college.

I really, really loved making 'This Is My Life' and 'Now and Then.'

I just want my kids to have the space of childhood to explore themselves as fully as possible.

I curate my T.V.-watching quite carefully.

I watched a lot of television as a kid, and the suburbs to me - that was exotic! Like, a mom and dad who lived in the same house and had jobs and cooked breakfast at the same time every morning and did laundry in a washing machine and dryer? That was like, 'Woah! Who are they? How do you get to be like that?'

As an actress, vanity is your enemy. If you're thinking about how you look, you're not going to give a good performance. Once I realized, 'Hmm, I guess I'm not that vain,' it's like something I wanted to protect. I can't imagine anyone could give the full dynamic performance they're capable of and still be vain.

Every scene is on the table to collaborate on, to pick apart, to try a million different ways. Usually, what ends up occurring in the end is something that no single person knew would happen or had planned for.

Going into my 20s, I was uncertain, trying to figure out what my relationship to acting is.

I went to school to study literature and writing, even though I didn't end up really doing that in the end.

If somebody smiles at me on the street, I'm like, 'Hi, have a nice day!'

My senior thesis was a documentary. By the time I graduated from college, I thought I was going to make films, and my interest in acting was there but kind of confused.

I don't know if I'd say I feel green, but I'm getting to know myself as an actor now in a way that I never did as a kid.

Our parents all experimented with raising us in a fairly loose, unorthodox way. A huge emphasis was placed on creativity, and our artistic efforts were never dismissed as childish. There was a sense that we - kids and grown-ups - all had the potential to make something of value. Our drawings were not simply destined for the refrigerator.

I wanted to live in the suburbs and have a white picket fence and my own bedroom. And a staircase - I thought having a staircase meant that you were a normal family. I thought somehow if you could transplant us to the suburbs, we would become a normal family. But in retrospect, I'm so grateful I grew up in the Chelsea.

I started missing acting when I was in school, and I realized after being in the business after however many years that I was really interested in film.

I don't watch a lot of T.V. I only watch things via Netflix, so I only watch the things that I'm choosing to watch.

The early part of my career was the 1990s, and I was living in New York working as an actor. It was the world I was in. A lot of companies had a great deal of money.

I'm interested in people. I'm curious about people, and of course we're curious about people whose work we respond to. So I'm not saying that I don't understand fascination with other people. But as it's dealt with in this American, modern-day culture, I find it not just boring but actually sort of destructive, really.

I think being on a set where people aren't being treated as equals, and with just a common level of decency and respect, is really uncomfortable.

When people are struggling, that's a painful place to be in, to not know who you are and where you belong and what you desire.

I'm normally the least busy person I know.

I was watching 'Pulp Fiction' when we were making 'Now and Then'. I didn't care about 'Now and Then,' you know?

I don't know how people do this waxing thing. Now I just have all these bumpy ingrown hairs.

I often use the word 'magical' to talk about what it feels like on set.

It's funny because I grew up with the T.V. on 24 hours a day. And the more money I made, the more T.V.s we had.

I think I happened to work with sort of a bunch of slightly difficult male directors when I was a kid. I've since worked with lots of male directors that I love, so I no longer see the distinction gender-wise.

I certainly don't have any boundaries myself, but I think I'm very aware of other people's.

All my cousins steal things. They're just a bunch of thieves. My whole family is like that. You put something down for a second, and they steal it. You never see it again.

I've never been on a television show as a regular before.

I was anxious before I decided to go back to acting about what I wanted to do with my life. Once I realized I was sort of interested in acting, I've been pretty lucky and had all these great parts. And I feel pretty much like, 'What will happen will happen.'

I think sexuality is fluid, and we have such a strange relationship to it in this country. It's been so fixed and so controlled for so long.

If you needed to borrow a cup of sugar, you knocked on your neighbour's door.

I'm not on social media; I don't watch TV. I'm really out of it.

I met Jill Soloway at Sundance a couple years ago. I was there for 'Crystal Fairy', and she was there for 'Afternoon Delight'. She reached out and wanted to get together.

There are really very few roles for women in films in which you can also make a living.

The sleeplessness is proven; it eradicates your memory.

I'm not one of those New Yorkers who so much identifies themselves with the city that they can't imagine living anywhere else. I plan to live a lot of other places, but it is defiantly is a big part of who I am. I have a complicated relationship with it. It has changed so much, but I love it, and it's my home. I'm really glad I grew up there.

I'd started acting as a child. But I wanted to see if it was something my true personality was interested in. I stepped away from offers when I took five years off to go to college. I've only really just decided to whole-heartedly embrace acting.

I just had fun making the movies - just being on set - but I didn't really care about the acting part.

I am paid to dive deeper into my own humanity and do that with other people in collaboration... so that, in and of itself, I just feel like is the greatest privilege in the world.

I was never that famous, but I do think going to college and really getting away from the business and taking a true break is incredibly, incredibly important if you start acting at a young age.

I've been told by many people that if I had a Twitter account, I would be making five hundred thousand dollars more a year.

I'm somebody who's super into psychology and analysis and the human psyche and the human experience.

My mother is the sort of a person who has no boundaries and no filter. She also has a big ego, but it's a very unique one. And I grew up with lots of artists in an environment where conformity and the norm were totally not what anybody was after.

People are obsessed with actresses being hairless, fatless Barbie dolls.

I don't revisit anything unless there's a really good occasion, like BAM screened 'This Is My Life', with Lena Dunham and Nora Ephron before she died. It also screened 'Uncle Buck', so I took my niece. I don't have a TV, so I don't happen upon old movies like you would if you had cable.

Acting was something that I grew up just doing. I certainly never thought about it.

People ask me all the time, 'What is it like being on set for a show about trans people?' And this is a state of normalcy to me.