Vera Farmiga Quotes

I have tender, romantic associations with upstate New York.

Music is what our feelings sound like.

There are women who make things better, there are women who change things, there are women who make things happen, who make a difference. I want to be one of those women.

In the quiet moments, the discoveries are made.

Your soul either feels lifted by something that you read, or it feels squashed by it.

I can't do Los Angeles. I've always been the anti-Barbie. I don't want to be in a place where almost every woman walks around with puffy lips, little noses and breasts large enough to nourish a small country.

No role is more challenging, rewarding and inspiring than my real-life role as a mom and a wife.

In these times, in this harsh, rude, warring world that we live in, where most of the bloodshed is 'My god is greater than your god,' and we're fighting in the name of our god, we have to find a way to peaceably coexist, spiritually.

Editing yourself is like an irksome coin toss. You've got to strip yourself of super ego and operate from the id. Maybe I've got my Freud mixed up. It's just hard to trade a beauty shot for the performance with truth and a brightly lit zit.

There's no wrong way to experience a film.

Am I ambitious? I used to be afraid of that word but now I think ambition is a good thing.

I think I always try to be accommodating and open and available and proving for my director. I love to give as many takes as they want. I love to give them as many choices as they want.

I feel my fuller-bodied characters are all in the independent films I do, and in the studio productions, I have to work harder to dimensionalize the characters. And that's certainly part of the job description of an actor - that's what you're supposed to do - but you have to work harder at it in the characters that I've encountered in studio films.

But I think for me, why I was drawn to the piece is, at the core of the story, it's a love story to me - between Ed and Lorraine, between these two families who are asking for help and us who are in the business of giving help.

Doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. It encompasses cynicism but also genuine questioning.

I've always believed that if you are precise in your thoughts, it's not the lines you say that are important - it's what exists between the lines. What I'm compelled by most is that transparency of thought, what is left unspoken.

I do love directing. I'm only comfortable working in the independent film arena for a very small budget where I have creative control and I can put my stamp on it.

I love Saturday nights with my best friend and a big bowl of pasta, wanting a good scare, something that will say, 'Listen, your life is not as bad as this. Your life can be so much worse'.

When you encounter sophistication in the creation of a female character, you thank the writers and you claim it.

I don't have a caustic sense of humor. What I find funny, that humor comes from a much gentler place.

When you're breastfeeding a child, you don't have the same retention as you do when you're not.

I was a Ukrainian folk dancer in my teens, and I toured the country in 1991, shortly before the break-up of the Soviet Union.

I'm hooked on Polanski's films, his psychological thrillers. I love 'Rosemary's Baby,' I love 'Repulsion.'

I think the worst thing that can happen to a good actor is fame.

The biggest research of all when I do a character is self-examination. You look at yourself and you ask, 'How am I similar to this person and how am I different?'

I can't get my knickers in a twist about my age and ageing in an industry that caters to the ids of 14-year-olds.

Sometimes music helps. If I feel that it's bogus, I'll literally just call myself out on camera and say that it's dishonest. You do whatever it takes.

To me representing clairvoyance, how was I going to achieve that, how I was going to capture that? For me, it all became about her gaze and the way she takes you in. It's a rhythmic thing and a stillness thing to consider but these are little details, little nuances. We were invited to the sanctity of her home and there were roosters running around and she's screaming, "Jackie, be quiet!" Even though she's in the middle of the thing. And these are the details that we wanted to incorporate into our story.

I grew up in a Ukrainian Catholic-turned-Christian household, and that is my family's faith.

The limelight is a tricky place, because you can't believe what's going on around you. You stop observing. You stop perceiving. You stop extending yourself, and you become isolated.

My husband is my best friend; he knows my sensibilities.

The nature of evil, the nature of it, it exists. It exists and I think within us we have the tools. If we have the will, we can combat it. I think the power is within us and it lies in our own conceptualization of God and positivity and compassion and love.

The more people know about you, the more face-time you get in the media, the harder your job becomes to create a character in whom people suspend disbelief.

There's just a deeper level of sophistication in the writing of female characters on TV.

I just wanted to make sure that yes, that those horror - they worked as a genre. To me, I just wanted to be touched by the film in the way that I saw plausible. Which is the story about compassion - giving and receiving it in those desperate times of need.

Chekhov, when it's done well and you're ready for it, can actually be quite funny.

Yeah, I think it's like any God-given gift. You writers have the gift of perception. If you don't use it, you're going to lose it. And it's the same thing with you [Lorraine], it's God-given.

I was very studious and square in college.

Honesty is not synonymous with truth.

I bring myself innately to it, yeah. I bring those details as much as I - what I don't obsess over is, there are certain ways I might've pushed it even a little more. For example, [to Warren] your accent. I know Warner Bros. at one point came in. I don't know, until you came to set, I know I wore that long tartan skirt and the ruffled blouse for that.

You dont necessarily have to be religious to pray.

You dont have to be gay to be attracted to your friend.

I think God gave us senses of humor, and we should use them.

Whether we call it religion or faith, we all battle for a balanced integrated soul.

We're all sick of holy wars and bloodshed because religion is supposed to give us life and a better life and is supposed to bring out our best self. When it results in mass destruction and hatred and anxiety, it's the antithesis I think of what religion was designed to do.

Honestly, I think a good film is spiritual, regardless of whether its subject is faith.

I think that films about faith made for faith-based communities have a certain tactic.

I just can't feel lukewarm about a character. I either despise her, admire her, or don't understand her and want to understand her.

I love to be surprised.

It's thematic in my career, if you look at most of my choices. It is some level of exploration of maternal angst and maternal heroism.