Winona Ryder Quotes

When you finally accept that it's OK not to have answers and it's OK not to be perfect, you realize that feeling confused is a normal part of what it is to be a human being.

You go through spells where you feel that maybe you're too sensitive for this world. I certainly felt that.

Crazy isn't being broken, or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me, amplified.

There was a time when I was 19 when I really, really, really thought I was going crazy. I was exhausted and going through a terrible depression.

I was very depressed after breaking off my engagement with Johnny ten years ago. I was embarrassingly dramatic at the time, but you have to remember I was only 19 years old.

I've learned that it's OK to be flawed, that life can be messy, that some days you glide and some days you fall, but most important, that there are no secret answers out there.

When I met Johnny, I was pure virgin. He changed that. He was my first everything. My first real kiss. My first real boyfriend. My first fiancé. The first guy I had sex with. So he'll always be in my heart. Forever. Kind of funny that word.

You have good days and bad days, and depression's something that, you know, is always with you.

You can't pay enough money to... cure that feeling of being broken and confused.

I am not a person who can really sit around and think about regrets because with every bad experience that you have, there is weirdly something good that comes from it.

Money doesn't matter on a deeply personal level. It doesn't make you feel any happier. But of course I am very aware that I don't have to worry about earning a living or about those very important practical things that most people have to worry about on a very real level.

Suddenly you're the mom, or you go from ... You're not an ingénue, you don't want to play an ingénue, but it's like that line in The First Wives Club [1996]: "There are only three ages for women in Hollywood: babe, district attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy."

I was inspired by lots of people, certainly in acting and in writing and stuff, but I never wanted to be somebody else.

I don't use the Internet, but apparently you can find out everything on it.

I remember when I first started being in magazines, I had pretty thin skin. I was this nerd that read books and stayed home and didn't go out.

I've learned that it's OK to be flawed.

I write pretty much every day, but I don't have any desire to publish anything.

I thought it was a cool parallel. Being replaced by the young thing. I know that definitely happens in Hollywood. It's harder to find good roles, and suddenly there's new girls. I'm at that age I've been warned my whole life about.

I'm quite comfortable looking at myself in movies, probably because I've been doing it for so long, since I was a kid. So I sort of watched myself grow up and go through adolescence, like, basically on camera.

A woman who wears high heels is very different, I think, than a woman who wears sandals.

I remember the whole thing with the word ambition. I was messed up for a while because I associated it with certain people who just want to be famous. I think, for a while, it was kind of a dirty word for women.

Dear Diary: My teen angst bullshit now has a body count.

People think that they just want movies like Pretty Woman, when really they - at least the ones that I know personally - have been waiting for something that doesn't completely insult them.

I was very lucky because Tim Burton really gave me a career. I don't think Hollywood would've known what to do with me. If I hadn't done 'Beetlejuice,' I think I would've just gone back to my school.

Remember, I'm the kind of kid who used to get stuffed into a locker by school bullies. I've never felt like I'm a big star at any level of my life.

I'm the type who'd rather not work than work on something I'm not into. I've done that a couple of times, and I feel like I can totally see it in my performance.

For a long time, I was almost ashamed of being an actress. I felt like it was a shallow occupation. People would be watching my every move.

Scapegoating will go on forever. We need someone to blame - illegal immigrants, single moms, people in prison. We need someone to victimize.

As an actress, you go where the stories are. I don't really care where it's seen, at this point. I just want to tell good stories and do good roles that I haven't done before.

You're lucky if you're in three great movies, or even one great movie. I've been so lucky. But if you rely on the business to dictate whether you're happy, it gets really complicated. You just can't do that. There have been times in my life that I've done that, and I've found it depressing.

It's an indication of how cynical our society has become that any kind of love story with a sad theme is automatically ridiculed as sentimental junk.

As an actress, you want to try new things. You don't want to repeat yourself. That becomes more important to you, as you get older.

My dad took me to all the best rock and punk shows when I was growing up and music has always been a part of my life. So I'm very interested in the music scene and I suppose that's why I've ended up going out with musicians. Dave Pirner is still one of my best friends.

I remember realizing, when I did Little Women [1994], that that was the only time girls that age were being written about. It was always boys - from David Copperfield to Lord of the Flies to Holden Caulfield. There were never young women going through adolescence or teen years; there were only little girls.

What's awful about being famous and being an actress is when people come up to you and touch you. That's scary, and they just seem to think it's okay to do it, like you're public property.

In high school, I dressed up as every James Bond girl. I was a teenage Pussy Galore.

I love my job. But all the stuff that comes with it, the thought of being propelled into the limelight again is not something I sit around and fantasize about, certainly. I'd much rather just do my work, and then go home and read my books and watch movies.

I was exhausted and going through a terrible depression.

I don't want to preach, and I don't want to tell people what to do.

Googling yourself is maybe one of the worst things you can do. I did it once, and someone had to talk me off a ledge.

I was mid-sentence when the casting director said, "Listen, kid. You should not be an actress. You are not pretty enough. You should go back to wherever you came from and you should go to school. You don't have it." She was very blunt - I honestly think that she thought she was doing me a favor.

In America, I don't know how much longer the environment is going to exist. I sort of strongly believe that we're in danger.

If I showed you scripts from my first few movies, the descriptions of my characters all said 'the ugly girl'.

Sometimes I'll watch a movie, and it's got some big star in it playing a working-class person, and the character is in a grocery store, and you can kind of tell, from just watching the scene, that this actor doesn't do their own shopping. So you have to have some sense of reality.

Weird people follow you in the streets, you can't sit alone in a restaurant or a cafe and read a book in peace, and I think everybody values those moments of being alone.

I'd always find the positive in someone.

I remember when I was doing Mermaids [1990], I was 16 and they gave me a B12 shot once. My parents weren't there, and when they did come, they freaked out. They were terrified, because of the Judy Garland stories. I know it's just vitamin B, but it did give you a boost.

I'm too young to play lawyers. But I've been really lucky because I never got labeled. I never did the John Hughes thing. I did adult movies. I'm not bragging or anything, but I think that I've chosen really good roles. I've played different people and showed that I have a little bit of range.

I was regarded as the school freak which further reinforced a lot of inhibitions and doubts I had about myself. I was a shy, frightened teenager for a long time.

I was so lucky that I got to meet certain people. It came through Roddy McDowall, who had become a photographer and would do these portraits of celebrities. Then he would get another well-known person to write a thing. He photographed me when I was 15 or 16, and he got Jason Robards to write the thing because he was sort of my mentor. And Roddy would invite me to these dinner parties that were insane. Like, Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen O'Hara and people that were just crazy. I still can't really believe that I met them.