Natasha Lyonne

I'm not someone who went to acting school - I was just out of the gate, doing it.

I was this kid who had been raised in New York, and now all of a sudden, my mother decided that she was a Jewish divorcee and therefore she should be living in Miami Beach.

I always see the absurdity in most situations. It's my experience of how life works.

I grew up in Manhattan, and I've always had all kinds of people around me. I've always had a very 'live and let live' point of view.

I have a deep compassion for the idea that it's okay to be myself. The idea that anything 'other' is bad and wrong and broken is so wildly off base.

I have a theory that self-made, first-generation actresses don't feel entitled to success.

From the first instant I met her, I wanted to be Nora Ephron. I just really wanted to please her.

It's such a weird thing: to sit and look at yourself is so distracting to the psyche. It would be like me standing in front of a mirror and looking at myself all day, trying to find a flaw.

The world at large doesn't always make sense to me, and there are safe havens. Linda Manz in 'Out of the Blue' is one of them.

I have to say, I'm still surprised anyone's nice to me, that anyone talks to me. But I think people understand that other people go through things. We're all a bit gonzo, and you're allowed to take a little time to get your head on straight.

There are epic downsides to living a somewhat public life. The upshot of that is there's nothing to hide. It's a relief in a way. There's nothing about me that can't be said.

I would have done well as a gypsy child, I think. A circus baby. I coulda played a great street urchin or ragamuffin. Or just been one. I certainly liked entertaining people and making jokes, but I don't know necessarily if that's what your child is prone to that you should necessarily put them in a real working industry at six years old.

I don't really feel like I need to be a teenager ever again.

I have a lot of friends who are trying to clean up their act, or that are still making trouble for themselves, so I'm definitely well-versed on what goes on in the mind and the heart of a person who self-destructs as their coping mechanism, and also what they're like when you take their preferred substance away.

Life is a wildly transient thing with people coming into your life and dropping away. It definitely takes work to maintain relationships.

It's a wild thing, that people have the ability to help each other by just relating to one another.

I started wearing all black around the time I got into Nirvana. I first heard 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' when I was about 12, and I remember jumping on my bed, so excited about it.

My family moved to Israel when I was eight until I was 10, and then we came back, and my parents split up. I was suddenly in a single-parent home and on scholarship. Fifth grade was such a hard year for me.

I do have an outsider's complex of getting made fun of. I was made fun of as a kid, and I don't have the stomach for it.

In my experience of living, for a time, in the underbelly of society, I spent a lot of time in various holding cells.

I learned that if you're going to be a troublemaker, you don't want a ton of witnesses, because there's inevitable fallout from living like you're in 'Lord of the Flies.'

As wild as I was, when the cops show up, and suddenly you're being handcuffed, it's so deeply shocking and terrifying, the loss of freedom.