Gerwig: "You only get one life, so you might as well feel all the feelings."

Gerwig: "I'm not goal-oriented so much as I'm constantly aware of what I'm passionate about, and I'm constantly updating the list. I envision many possible futures for myself where I could be happy, so I just try to keep my passions alive."

Gerwig: "Books and theater were the way I understood the world and also the way I organized my sense of morality, of how to live a good life."

Gerwig: "I have very intense feelings of joy or sadness. I used to not like that so much because I was worried it was girly, and I wanted to be more stoic. I think this happens a lot. When you're 16, there are qualities you wish you didn't have, and then when you're 30, you're like, 'Thank God I have that; otherwise, I'd be living less vividly.'"

Gerwig: "I've never had a plan, I've always done things from instinct."

Gerwig: "When you're on set, and that clock is going, every second you spend doing something is a second you spend not doing something else. That's true of all of life, but it's very vivid on a film set because you're always managing that."

Gerwig: "I'm always interested in how people use language to not say what they mean."

Gerwig: "I'm really interested in trying to tell stories about women that don't involve romantic components. That's so much a part of the way we feel about female characters and their needs that it feels like it's built in - but I'd like to find a way that it's not. There are so many more stories than that."

Gerwig: "I get nerdy and nervous around not only great actors, but great directors and DPs I love."

Gerwig: "I have a fundamentally hopeful view about people, and that might merely be a reflection of the fact that I've lived an incredibly privileged life in a very wealthy nation without a lot of the struggles that most of the world has to face."

Gerwig: "The more particular you make something, the more universal it becomes."

Gerwig: "I'm always interested in relationships between women. I'm always interested in how women relate to each other, whether it's a family relationship or it's a friend relationship. That's such uncharted territory in cinema."

Gerwig: "I feel like I'm an actor that likes to have lots of points of connection."

Gerwig: "I just don't feel like I've seen very many movies about 17-year-old girls where the question is not, 'Will she find the right guy' or 'Will he find her?' The question should be, 'Is she going to occupy her personhood?' Because I think we're very unused to seeing female characters, particularly young female characters, as people."

Gerwig: "There's nothing more thrilling than watching great actors say things that you wrote and bring them to life."

Gerwig: "When I was a kid, I used to do my homework in the living room, where there was a picture window. I was hoping that someone would walk by and see me looking very studious in my living room."

Gerwig: "I knew I wanted to be involved with theater or film in any way I could, either as a writer or director or actress."