Brit Marling Quotes

I used to be able to sit in a chair and for four hours straight in a very focused meditative way be in my own world without ay interruption. And now it's like your brain is getting so trained to check your phone, and there is like a dopamine release every time you get a text whether it's a good or a bad one. I'm really worried about what it's doing to our minds.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Human beings are flawed and complicated and messy.

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.

Life and death and birth is this fantastic mystery that we cannot fully grasp.

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.

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

People go to the cinema to be moved; they wanna laugh, they wanna cry, they wanna feel something deeply, especially if they're not feeling deeply in their own lives.

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!

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I think movies do change people's hearts.

So writing became a way to get to act in things that I thought were meaningful, and hopefully write stronger roles for other women.

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.

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

The most intoxicating thing about being an actor is to surrender to a story that you never would have come up with.

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.

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.

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.

That's the funny thing about cinema, it is an intellectual medium, but it's also sort of anti-intellectual.

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

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.

I think one thing for sure that you learn the more films that you make is how important it is to choose your collaborators.

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.

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

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

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 think we accept a lot of those boxes, that labeling, and the way that we perceive the world, but what even is perception? It all seems pretty flexible to me.

Sometimes big budget means explosions! CGI! CGI, the possibilities are so limitless that it begins to be impractical. I'm more interested in the kinds of movies where the science fiction world has a set series of rules and you operate in it because of, maybe, constraints in the budget.

The more time you invest in something, potentially, the deeper the emotional impact of the climax. It's true of relationships, too.

I'd love to do anything that is outside of my comfort zone, that I've never done before. Whenever I think about something that I want to take on, I like it if it makes me a bit nervous, or makes me feel like I don't know exactly that I can pull it off.

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.

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.

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.