“Describing someone as quirky is a way of erasing them. What does it ev...” — Maggie Gyllenhaal Quote

Describing someone as quirky is a way of erasing them. What does it even mean? In so many interviews over the years, that's how I'm described. It doesn't sit comfortably with me.

I used to think that if I did my very best work, then everyone would love it, but I've realised that not everybody thinks the same things are good. It took me 30 years even to begin to see that.

I made a movie where I played a girl that just got out of prison and we shot it very very quickly but very intensely-that took me a long time to get over.

I get magnetically pulled towards a project because there's something in it that offers me the opportunity to explore the edge of my understanding about myself.

I think, in the past, you could buy a flat and live comfortably on theatre and touring theatre, but you can't do that anymore, which means that you have to have a certain amount of celebrity and profile to, therefore, get TV and film work.

In my Scandinavian-American family, we were conditioned never to sit, at least not comfortably. I was endlessly going back to work. We longed for the fleeting respite of being useful and regarded sleep as a reward for exhaustion, always to be deferred until after the sun goes down.

I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost.

I can't learn lines comfortably unless I have it done out loud with someone else.