Zooey Deschanel Quotes
Actress
If I could give my teenaged self any advice, it would be 'Calm down!'
I like to play the ukulele, but I'm not, like, awesome at it. I mostly play the piano and the guitar.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am really into hair. I'm a real girly girl and love doing my hair and experimenting with different styles.
I like old movies, screwball comedies, vintage clothes, and basically I'm an old-fashioned gal.
Summer has always been my favorite season. I feel happier.
I love having a lot of content. I prefer to have constant stimulation.
You don't have to wear expensive clothes to look good.
Nothing's better than a picnic.
I went to Northwestern because I had gone to a really nontraditional high school. I was like, 'It'd be cool to have a traditional college experience.' Then I was like, 'Oh, but none of these people understand what's cool about me. My specialness is not appreciated in this place.'
I still have in me the same awareness when I was 12 and chubby and a girl was spitting in my face. I'm the same person.
I hate camping, but I love summer camp.
I think I'm a fun flatmate. I'm always cheerful. I go on tour with my band so it's 12 people on one bus and I feel like I'm the one who's happy in the morning. I'm not a chaotic person, but I might slack off on doing the dishes from time to time.
I grew up believing my sister was from the planet Neptune and had been sent down to Earth to kill me. I believed this because my sister Emily convinced me of it when I was a toddler. I think she'd seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers and her imagination ran away with her. There's a part of me that still believes it.
I always wanted to be normal. I tried really hard, but it's like I try so hard and then people still say I'm offbeat. I've learnt to accept that and take advantage of it as an actor.
My biggest complaint with tights is that they do not accommodate skinny-ankled people like myself.
For me, writing is 75 percent procrastinating and 25 percent actually sitting down and working.
There's something about guitars, they're just so big, you know what I mean? You're just like, 'Ugh!' It just seems so overwhelming. And the ukulele is, like, the opposite of overwhelming.
I love singing Christmas carols. I know every harmony to every music-hall Christmas song.
Modern recording has made it so that people can spend forever taking shortcuts and making everything uniform, but that strips music of what makes it exciting.
I find sadness and strife to be so much more interesting with an upbeat melody.
I get embarrassed a lot of times getting attention, but I like being onstage. Do you know what I mean? If I'm in a crowd of people and they're all looking at me, I will feel embarrassed. It's a strange dichotomy.
I think making a movie or a record, the best things happen by accident - and those end up being the magic. Every time I've followed my gut it's been better than when I've tried to do what I was supposed to do.
Certain aspects of my personality are always going to come out on-screen. I guess that's just me - if they say I'm quirky, I'm quirky. It's better than being boring.
Always the aim for me is making people feel like they are not alone. That's just the greatest feeling.
I don't know why femininity should be associated with weakness. Women should be free to express who they are without thinking, 'I need to act like a man, or I need to tone it down to be successful.' That's a very good way to keep women down.
I've personally never wanted to be 'the babe', and refuse to let vanity get in the way of my acting because I don't see my job as being a beautiful person.
I'm a person who gets better with practice. Getting older is awesome - because you get more practice.
I will wear tights even if it's 100 degrees outside. Tights are my safety blanket.
I never have time to have a dinner. I have to eat while I'm memorizing lines. The only way to maintain energy is to eat all day long. I must eat all day long.
I'm a very positive person. I get excited easily, and I like to jump around.
The average person tells a few white lies.
Secretly, I think everyone who makes fun of California really does want to be in California.
I have had brown hair and bangs since I was 2. One year I dyed it blonde, which felt so weird.
The first album I bought with my own money was 'A Hard Day's Night.'
You can't expect to make no effort. You still have to make the effort and be kind and understanding.
I did go through this period where girls would be mean and I had a lot of guy friends. But I've found as an adult the importance of having female and male friends.
I love indie movies. I think that independent cinema is where it's at and where a lot of trends begin. It's where new filmmakers are breaking through.
You go to something like the Golden Globes, and it's the most glamorous place you could ever be, but then you go home and you're still like, 'Urgh, this dress is too tight, I wanna take off these shoes and put on my pyjamas.' At the end of the night all the glamour goes away and you're just a human.
My sister was always very motherly, babysitting and stuff.
I tend to like simple music. And clever, succinct lyrics. Songs that don't try to be more than they need to to be effective, to stir up something emotionally within you.
I'm the worst at picking what movies are going to do well. I have no idea. I'm really surprised if a movie I like does well.
I can't even remember the first time I started singing.
No, I've been singing forever. I started out doing musicals. I think that was part of the reason why they gave me the part, because I sang.
I started out doing musicals.
Sites like Funny or Die and College Humor are great, but I'd say it's appealing to 80% men and 20% women.
I can't go on Gawker. I actually think the writing is really funny, but there is a chance that somebody is undercutting me.
I just sort of follow my bliss, so to speak, and then I see where that takes me.
I think the best comedic actors don't play it for comedy, they play it for reality. Then you find it funny because it's real. Playing the genre is the worst thing you can do - it's embarrassing.
I gravitate towards happy music. I love the Beach Boys.
It's nice that there are movies and songs about romance - it's what motivates us as human beings. I'm all for being brainwashed by rom-coms.
I don't have control over what's on screen, and that's terrifying.
If I'm trying to please every craze fan, then I can't. Of course, we all want to please the fans.
It's a lot harder to do an ensemble because your energy is going in so many different places, and you have to cover everybody. You have to sort of split your attention.
It's an addiction. I love clothes. I like to go down Melrose and look in all the windows and I go to different flea markets. I have lots of costumes. You never know when you're going to have to dress up like a milkmaid from the 1600s.
I wasn't really the most charming person, socially - it took me a long time to develop my people skills - but the one place I was always comfortable was onstage, acting or singing.
I grew up believing my sister was from the planet Neptune and had been sent down to Earth to kill me.
I'm into sincerity in music and sincerity in art. If it doesn't feel true, I don't want to do it. Things that are too dramatic scare me. I think that's why I don't always fit into the world of performing arts.
I like singing as much as I like acting, and all through high school I thought I might be a Broadway singer.
I'm always trying to do stuff I haven't done before or challenge myself so I'm not resting on my laurels all of the time because if I just found my little niche and never left it, I'd be pretty boring, I think.
I always choose roles that are, you know, hopefully different from the last role. I don't wanna do the same thing over and over again because that's, well, first of all that's no fun.
I think it's better to have your personal life and your work life separate. That way they don't corrupt each other, so to speak.
I love downtown L.A .and I relish any opportunity to spend time there.
I think there's a certain space people have decided I occupy - the funny-sidekick thing.
I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards - Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.
I'm always doing something musically - when I'm working or when I'm off.
I love to cook. But I have some food allergies, so I have to contend with those.
Especially in comedies, I think a lot of time the female characters are there to provide a balance for guys.
I get really insecure because even though I can speak in musician's terms, I don't know as much as real musicians.
I wish I got invited to more luaus. I really do!
I sort of consider myself a comedic actress, not a comedienne. I think it's different. You know, I'm not a stand-up or anything, but playing into comedic situations is sort of where, I think, my strength lies.
I really like the collaboration of doing movies and television. But I like the sort of solitary work of doing music.
From my perspective, probably women are won over by people who are sweet and respectful and courteous and kind and funny. I think those are the things that win women over.
I like romantic comedy as a genre, but I think it can get stuck in its ways.
I'm a person who has a lot of energy. So, yes, I don't really stop to rest or de-stress. I just keep going. I figure that if you don't stop, then you'll never notice how tired you are.
I have Pro Tools on my computer, and I make CDs all the time.
I've always straddled a weird line - there's a lot of mainstream stuff that I love. At the same, I still feel like an outsider. I'm the outsider who's on the inside.
I think that the mistakes that anyone can make going on dates is probably not being themselves because you can only trick people for so long.
If I were to work with my mom, I probably would not want her to play my mom. That would get too real.
In my mind, I always think of myself as an underdog type.
'It Girl' is supposed to be something that only lasts a certain amount of time. They keep calling me an 'It Girl,' and at this point it makes me laugh, because I've done that so many times: 'You're it;' 'You're not it.' What is 'it?'
I'm not going to say I'm a big girl. I'm a very small person, but I'm a healthy weight. That might be a little weird for Hollywood.
'Pastoralia' by George Saunders is one of my favorite novels.
I am always early to work but sometimes late to other things.
I don't like business talkers, you know, people who are constantly like, 'Blah blah blah movies.' I find it incredibly boring.
If 'New Girl' had been a movie, I don't know whether I would have been given the opportunity to do it.
I put myself out there; it's part of my job, and I get it: people will attack me. At first I was thrown off, but now I have a pretty thick skin about it.
Nothing could be as hard as middle school.
True love that lasts forever... yes, I do believe in it. My parents have been married for 40 years and my grandparents were married for 70 years. I come from a long line of true loves.
Women I admired growing up - Debra Winger, Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep - were all beautiful and thin, but not too thin. There are a lot of actresses who are unhealthy-skinny - much, much too skinny. You can't Pilates to that.
People sometimes say, 'Oh, you were a movie star,' and I'm like, 'No, I was a supporting actress.' I wasn't an A-list actress, and I'm fine with that. I'm proud of what I did in film.
I'd be more likely to go for somebody who is like me. Well, I like creative people, so whatever that means... Yeah, authentic and creative.
I think penguins are cute.
It's very much a piece of myself when I write a song. I don't mean to say it's very personal, like the lyrics mean something personal to me. When I write a song, that's my taste in music - my taste in chord progressions and melodies.
What led me to be an actor is that I have a strange something in me that can drastically change the way I appear to the world. Growing up, I couldn't understand why people would always have different ideas of me - but because of that I became aware of how you can manipulate your own ability to change. And then I learned to make a career of it.
If you can make a character likable that's not very nice, that's the challenge of the job.
I think I'd say that my whole body of work is a reflection of who I am, but not any one specific thing.
Classic Christmas cookies are really time-consuming. Instead, make a bar you can bake in a pan and just cut up, like a brownie or a blondie or a shortbread, which still has that Christmas vibe.
When you work on a movie, especially an independent movie, it's a lot of work to make it! It's not just our job as actors - so many people are working so hard, and even the littlest movie takes a lot of work.
The Internet's like one big bathroom wall with a lot of people who anonymously can say really mean things. It's fine, I believe in freedom of speech and I think people should think what they want, but I don't care to hear it.
There's a vegan and gluten-free bakery called BabyCakes that I love. They've got shops in New York and Los Angeles. Their stuff is amazing.