Zoe Kazan

I find playwriting really painful. I love it, or I wouldn't do it, but I don't love the theater as much as I love movies.

I love bad movies, whereas going to the theater for me is a painful experience. I think it's really hard to sit and watch actors do something live and have it not go well.

Anytime that I've felt uninspired, I don't force myself to sit down and write. I only do it when I feel the impulse.

I love to walk around New York. Honestly, that's like the best thing, to walk over to Park Slope and go visit my friend Betty and take her dog out in the park or go walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. I really dig being outside and getting to see everybody in the street.

Well, I have a sister that I'm very close with, and that relationship is probably the most intense relationship of my life to date, probably of my life, period.

You set up the story, but the characters start talking, and they go places that you didn't expect. You have to follow.

When I'm writing, I look like a fool because the parts are moving through me and I'm crying and laughing and making faces.

And then the really awful thing is that at the end of the day after crying and experiencing things, then you look at what you've written and you're like, 'Hmm, there's half a page that's good here.' Then you throw out everything else.

People really do make the assumption that I had some weirdo Hollywood upbringing, but my parents are incredibly down-to-earth people who worked really hard to raise us in a way that was health.

If I ever feel that acting is just soul-sucking and I don't want to do it anymore, I could stop.

I find playwriting to be incredibly difficult compared to screenwriting. Part of it is that I grew up watching movies and not watching plays.

But my family's really close and I was interested in what Mommy and Daddy did for a living. So when Mommy and Daddy had a script that wasn't totally age inappropriate, they would let me read it. And we would talk about it.

I read a lot of plays as a kid, but I didn't see that many plays, so I feel better-versed in film history and film structure. I just think it's easier to think in pictures.

I don't have a lot of patience for boring arthouse movies.