Growing up in downtown New York City in the ’80s, we were ensconced in art and progressive thinking,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. We never felt patronized.

I love Beyoncé, I do. But I was walking down the street and saw this huge billboard for the documentary, she made about herself called, Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream (2013). Underneath the billboard is this homeless guy, then there’s me with $2 in my bank account, and I’m thinking, Life is but a dream? I mean, I love you, B, but really?

I feel like everyone here is so creative. They think up a project, and the next thing you know, they’re doing it.

We lived in a classless society. We’d spend a summer at Gore Vidal’s house in Italy, but we were on and off welfare…

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 really enjoyed being on movie sets, and I had fun with the people, but I didn’t really think about acting or care, or I didn’t think I cared about acting.

I never made the choice to be an actor. It just sort of happened to me when I was a kid, for whatever reasons that are irrelevant in this moment.

I did act as a kid, but I quit when I was seventeen.

I got to college in ’99, and I went to study literature and writing, and so within a couple years we had Bush elected, 9/11, we were at war, so I was sort of having my political and spiritual awakening at the same time I was becoming an adult, and that’s a lot of stuff at once. I became very focused on the state of the world, and I started studying that stuff more, and I just had a real identity crisis. I couldn’t even really just study literature.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I even realized how much I loved film and started to appreciate acting, this beautiful medium of artistic expression. All I wanted to do was go to college, and I thought I wanted to be a teacher.

It’s fun to play somebody who’s kind of struggling.

There are things to be afraid of – like extraordinary poverty and suffering beyond anything I’ve experienced, and climate change, despots – but there’s really nothing to be afraid of when your job is an actor and you’re at work, if you’re in a place that is safe and full of respect and love, which we are.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 think being on a set where people arent being treated as equals, and with just a common level of decency and respect, is really uncomfortable.

I dont watch a lot of T.V. I only watch things via Netflix, so I only watch the things that Im choosing to watch.

Theres plenty of great independent films to do, but you cant support yourself making independent film as an actress.

All my cousins steal things. Theyre 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 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.

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

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.

I spent my twenties not really participating in the work force in any real way. I acted a tiny bit, but that was just because it was the only way I knew how to make money, and I sublet my apartment and lived in the woods and just tried to figure out who I was and what I wanted, what my real desire was and not just what I was used to doing, and it was a really confusing and painful, but really rich and amazing time.

God, the world is so f – ked up, and we all have to do something about it.

I don’t think there is anybody who’s watching television right now who wants to see something because it looks good rather than feel something because it feels right or familiar or new or whatever.

I’m interested in acting because I’m interested in exploring humanity, and we’re all nuts, we’re all damaged, and we’re all gorgeous, so anything less than that is dishonest to me.

It’s fun to play somebody who’s kind of struggling.

I come from a very naked family, so that’s just something that’s not a big deal for me. I don’t think it means anything other than that.

I do think that taking these sort of natural mind-opening and altering drugs does have an effect. Doors and windows that you didn’t even know were in the house are open and you’re seeing views you’ve never noticed before. Even though, when you come down, the world sort of goes back to the way it was, an inkling of that transformed vision and experience of the world remains. I think it’s a little bit medicinal, and over time it sort of builds up a new experience of the world. That’s when I think smoking pot and doing drugs is really good for you, spiritually speaking.

I thought, I’m just going to give as much attention and curiosity to acting as I did to like making my coffee in the morning and see how that feels, rather than resisting it and angsting, and it turned out it felt great.

I got into cooking and I went and cooked in Italy. I became a doula for a while. I built stone walls one summer, and I read a lot, and I swam a lot, and I spent a lot of time thinking.

I happen to be extremely comfortable naked.

Looking at somebody looking good is so… boring.

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.

That’s something that rationally and logically I can’t try to figure out, how somebody “transitions” so rapidly and so drastically, but I don’t worry about it now.

I don’t think people should do things that they’re not comfortable with, unless they want to stretch themselves in that way and challenge themselves.

I know that the emotional narrative will work in the end, and I just have to play each moment honestly even if the getting from A to B doesn’t totally make sense initially.

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

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.

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

I’m somebody who’s super into psychology and analysis and the human psyche and the human experience. Other than just the purely enjoyable aspect of being on a nice, natural drug, I think doing such drug can be a very positive force in constantly forcing you to see yourself in a new way, and see and hear others in a new way. It really brings you back to square one. It deteriorates the ego, is basically what I’m saying.