Top 83 Quotes & Sayings by Sarah Paulson

I am a person who is not mated.

To me, most of life kind of lives in the grey and I don't just mean morally. I just mean kind of everything. If things were black and white it would be a lot clearer as to what to do all the time.

I'm not interested in a character's goodness. I'm interested in what makes them human.

I work in the '60s more than I've done anything else. I did a movie, called 'Down with Love', in the '60s. I did a movie for HBO about the Johnson administration in the '60s.

I had a complicated home life, and my teachers, predominantly my theater teachers and my English teachers, were very dedicated to taking care of me in a particular way. And in doing so, I think I developed a very easy rapport with people older than myself.

I'm interested in telling the character's story, not my beliefs, political or otherwise.

I love the idea of people walking away with the idea of hope and possibility.

The thing I worry about for myself is I spend a lot of time alone, and another person comes around and you're like, 'What are you doing here? Get out of here.'

If I'm not moved from one spot to another, internally, while I'm witnessing it, reading it, consuming it, whatever, I don't know why we're being asked to the party.

I've never been on a show that's run for more than a season.

There's a poignancy to being with someone older. I think there's a greater appreciation of time and what you have together and what's important, and it can make the little things seem very small. It puts a kind of sharp light mixed with a sort of diffused light on something.

I think it's very important for people to not judge the people you're playing. You have to find a way to love them because their story is theirs. I just don't think there would be any use in that.

I don't feel like a very nostalgic person. I think about the past much more clinically. When I look back and wonder, 'Why was I doing that? Was it a waste of time?' I don't beat myself up. Instead, I say, 'I'm so glad I did that, because now I really know what matters to me.'

My mom moved to New York City alone with a kid on each hip to try to live an authentic artistic life.

I did an episode of 'Law & Order,' where I literally didn't move my neck because I thought you couldn't move your head on camera.

My choices in romantic partners have not been conventional, and therefore, the idea that it is 'other' makes it compelling.

I was constantly, always and forever, trying to perform the musical 'Annie' for anyone who would listen, and I have a terrible singing voice. It was the first thing that made me think I wanted to be an actress.

I've only been to one concert in my life.

If you heard me sing, you would just plug your ears and run, screaming, the other way. I promise.

All my friends went to the Madonna concert when I was in, maybe, the 9th grade, and my mother refused to let me go.

'American Horror Story' is my home. It's the place I feel the most comfortable.

To not have any hope is where things start to get really bleak. Things are possible. The impossible can be possible.

No, I'm not a Republican working in Hollywood, I am a Democrat.

I started auditioning, and the first job I ever got was understudying Amy Ryan in 'The Sisters Rosensweig' on Broadway, directed by Daniel Sullivan. I was 18 years old.

The mythology is that from chaos comes great work. I actually used to think that when I was younger, and I no longer think that anymore.

We're constantly, as human beings, trying to understand why we do what we do and how we got to wherever we find ourselves today. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to look back and go, 'I can't believe I spent one day with that person, much less two years.'

To truly feel seen by another person makes you feel so peaceful.

If my life choices had to be predicated based on what was expected of me from a community on either side, that's going to make me feel really straitjacketed, and I don't want to feel that.

My sister's a big karaoke person, and she's never been able to get me to do it.

My choices in life have been unconventional, and that's my business. But I do want to live responsibly and truthfully without hiding.

It's OK to sit in the Golden Globe room and look around and think, 'Oh, Helen Mirren's a loser tonight, so is Nicole Kidman. Meryl Streep lost tonight. Jessica Lange didn't win.' If you're gonna be in the company of losers, that's the company to be in.

There's some bohemian part of me where the idea of falling back on something meant I expected to fail.

I'd love to be in the '70s. I'd love to have a big, long wig parted down the middle with flat-ironed hair and bell-bottoms. They're actually very flattering for my figure. The wider the leg, the better for a person with a booty.

My mom worked late, and I was at home a lot by myself. It was good for my imagination - and bad for it, too.

The idea of being on a show where each season stands alone, and you can come back the next year and show an entirely different aspect of your personality or your talent or your anything is an enormous gift that you rarely get in television.

Sometimes I think on television, you use maybe a tenth of what you are able to do. So it's nice to go, 'Well, I'm gonna take two months and reinvest in acting and storytelling.' You don't get to do that on television.

Being in a hotel room and watching 'The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' is one of my great joys.

I had gone away from Twitter because before people had been so mean to me. Talking about my lisp and my enormous forehead and all these things. I do have a lisp, I do have a forehead I know you could land a plane on, it's no mystery to me. I just didn't have the skin for it.

I like to go into an audition room, particularly when they think I'm not right for a part, and really fight for it. There's something so exciting and challenging about proving to yourself that you can pull it off.

Looking back is a way to sharpen the focus on the things you want to change in your life. I think there's something about nostalgia that really puts a fine point on the here-and-now, and that can be incredibly fascinating and interesting and engaging for the mind.

I moved to L.A. and did a two-part episode of this British export show called 'Cracker.' I kissed Josh Hartnett. I think Josh Hartnett's first onscreen kiss was me, unfortunately.

All of my friends went to college, and I got a job at Circle Pizza, where I worked for 24 hours. I had to call my mother four times to ask her how to spell Parmesan. I'm not kidding. I was a terrible speller.

I usually feel like the role comes to you to sort of illuminate some piece of where you are in your life. I feel like I myself am a single woman and I'm childless - by choice - at this point, and I don't know what will happen.

My mother had a cotillion, but she wanted to be bohemian.

I just don't feel that we've traveled very far in the realm of social equality. There just seems to be a little bit of unrest. And sometimes I think that happens when you really feel like something's about to change. Right before the moment of lift off, sometimes things feel a little bit unhinged, and that's what it feels like to me right now, both as a woman and just as a human on the planet as an American woman in America. I feel like we're on the precipice of change. I feel a little nervous.

I like the ritual of putting on my makeup, putting on my costume, doing my warm-ups. I eat the same dinner every night before I go on stage. I like having something that I can count on, something that feels stabilizing for me.

I learned, having played Marcia Clark, what the value of that is in your life because it can affect everything, every choice you make, the way you deal with a stranger on the street, or your best friend or lover. It's a powerful thing to know yourself and to have the commitment and the courage to let that be your guide.

I played a lesbian reporter in 1964, who was incarcerated, and ended the series as a 75-year-old woman. And then, I was a witch blinded by acid who became the Supreme, and took my mother's energy and life, so that I could live and she would die. And then, I was conjoined twins. And then, I played a heroin addict.

I could feel my body temperature - I knew I was bright red. It was so humiliating, I was so upset, and it was nothing I had planned to do. It was just one of those beautiful moments, the alchemy of acting that is so mysterious, where you sort of go, "How did that come out of me?"

Anything is possible, and the truth is any human being at any given moment, no matter how good they are - not only at their job but also as a person - they're capable of anything, and it's not always a conscious thing.

I remember feeling the temperature change the first time the curtain came up, the difference between the audience temperature and the stage temperature. I'll never forget it.

If I had my druthers, I would be working in all different mediums, forever.

Acting is doing. The more you do, the more you learn. Work begets work.

My great love is the stage because I do feel like it's the place where, if you're lucky and everything is firing in the right way, you have the greatest shot at being successful. I don't mean by getting great reviews, but I mean by finding the core fo the person that you're playing.

There are rules, and when certain things happen, there are ceratin consequences.

I think sometimes when you can feel the velocity of change, like nowadays, you really need a seat belt. It's almost like having a growth spurt that you can feel, like a 16-year-old who woke up one day and grew four inches literally overnight. That can be a painful thing sometimes.

I have friends say, "Don't you want to have a little you?" The jury's still out on that for me. I don't have a definitive answer, but I do know that I can look back on some of the things I've worked on and some of the things that have literally come out of my imagination and be just as proud of it as if I had created a person. I feel like that shouldn't be of any less value. It can't be because it's what my life is, and I don't want to make it smaller or more palatable just because society tells you to. If you can get comfortable with sacrifice, then you are having it all.

The thing I worry about for myself is I spend a lot of time alone, and another person comes around and you're like, 'What are you doing here? Get out of here.

Nobody could ever say as many terrible things to me as I say to myself.

I personally think it would be a very liberating thing for women to allow themselves to understand that having it all incorporates sacrifice. It does mean that you can't be everywhere all the time. It does mean that your friends are not going to get all of you.