Lauren Graham Quotes - Page 2

Over and over in the play my character says, "I'm thirty-two years old," as if that should explain everything that's wrong in her life. I don't know what it's like to be thirty-two, but I can imagine. I imagine she means she's stuck in an in-between time, she's at an age that isn't a milestone but more of a no-man's-land, an age where she's feeling like her hopes are fading.

I think what my hope is is that the only downside of having a steady job on television is, I think for all actors, there's a piece, there's some adrenaline, and part of the love of the job is not knowing what's coming next, and the variety.

These days I have to be extra nice in stores. It never fails that whenever I look as bad as I can possibly look or I am sort of cranky because the store is out of something, that is precisely the time when someone one will recognize me and say: 'I really like your show.'

My mother had lived in London since I was little, so she never got to see my school plays and stuff.

None of my characters have really had jobs.

I'm nice, and I show up on time.

You want the story to end when it's supposed to and not be squeezed for somebody's financial gain.

When the creator of the show is gone, the actors end up being the people who have been there the longest.

Some people think my father was a spy, because of working for that government agency in Vietnam, but he can't find his car keys, much less keep a national secret.

As actors we always say that once the person in a scene gets what they want, the scene is over. It's resolved. But life is never resolved - you're always in the process.

I came from a Sorkin-like project in the sense that there was no freedom to change a line, which, in a weird way, is its own freedom because you're living within that structure and know this is what it is. You just adjust. Every project has its own personality.

Maybe I should sit. Plenty of people use sitting as a way to pass the time.

If I had a normal job and had been moving up, I'd be management level now.

Like my dad, I have a Christmas party most years. I like to celebrate and see as many people as possible.

I definitely wanted to be an actor. I didn't want to be on TV, I didn't want to be famous, I didn't want to be anyone in particular; I just wanted to do it. I see young people now who look at magazines, or American Idol and their goal is to have that lifestyle - to have good handbags, or go out with cute guys from shows, or whatever. But I definitely wanted to be an actor.

Writing a memoir isn't particularly interesting to me. I'm not like Ellen [DeGeneres], where I can write, 'Water bottles--they're crazy!' and it's funny.

That's the thing that always stuck out to me - the idea that quantity becomes quality. I always took it to mean if you do anything enough, if you keep putting effort in, eventually something will happen, with or without you. You don't have to have faith when you start out, you just have to dedicate yourself to practice as if you have it.

I was always torn between wanting whatever I pictured as a typical high school experience and that being just a part I wanted to play. I've written about this, but one of those typical high school experiences was drill team. Like, I just really wanted to wear a uniform and get on the bus and be part of this group. As an only child, the idea of blending in - and literally everyone being in sync and not standing out at all - felt like kind of a fun family thing.

I'm gonna try to talk about this in a secular way, but where's the spirituality of just being a person? I think it contributes to this rise in bad manners and mean comments; people are being driven by seeking something that's just designed to keep them seeking something. I'm not reducing people in this age to phone-addicted dum-dums, but we have to remind ourselves to also study compassion and inner life as well.

Personally, all I ever want to be wearing are jeans.

Moving. Someone said this to me a long time ago, it's bhuddist saying, I think: 'There is no wasted effort'.

It's great to have an acting job in the age of Reality TV.

The best you can hope for is a great collaborator.

The thing you must really do in television is bring yourself to everything you do - you can't try to be anybody else.

My biggest goal was - I thought, God, if I could just be a rep company member at the Arena Stage in Washington, D. C. and get to play a bunch of parts in a year! And now in my work everything is about promoting it. It's not about the doing of it! Everything is: You have to sell it, and they ask you to tweet about it or do photo shoots, even for the smallest job. There's an imbalance in terms of what is actually gratifying. The stuff that is gratifying is, like I said, the day of work and the doing of it.