Claire Danes Quotes

I want to know who you are as a person, and then I want you to develop as a whole human being.

I've grown so much, not just as an actor, but as a human being.

I think that until we're 21, human beings don't get to know themselves very much.

It wasn't until I went to college and met different people from different areas of life - and then went to San Francisco and met people who really knew who the hell they were - that I kind of caught up in a hurry.

My daughter's 19. I'm not asking her to develop as an artist. I'm just asking her to develop as a full person, human being.

With each year that's gone by, and as I grow up and get older, I've become more mature, of course, but you have a sense of who you are, and you find confidence in that.

You don't become a fully-formed human as a female, or even a male, until you're at least 30.

I think I've been lucky enough to have had an extended adolescence. I'm a lot like I was when I was 15.

Some people manage to make that transition from child actor to adult actor seamlessly. But I felt that if I spent my whole life on a film set without taking a few years to do something else, all I would ever know about was film sets.

I didn't get on TV until I was 30, which is really fortunate because you are who you are at that point.

We grow neither better or worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.

To be honest, I think for part of my late teens my character didn't really develop very much. I was in a state of cold storage.

Refusing to grow up is like refusing to accept your limitations. That's why I don't think we'll ever grow up.

The feelings we all have as 50-year-olds are different than the feelings we all have as 30-year-olds. That informs everything we do.

I think you do a lot of your growing as a human being between the ages of 13 and 18.

Rock 'n' roll says, 'Hey, man, this is where you can be normal,' and then after a while you grow up and you go, 'Wait a minute. Oh, by the way, I learned how to do these cool things, but I never learned how to speak my mind. I never learned how to express myself emotionally. I should have been paying attention more.'

I think that everybody kind of changes a lot between the time they're seventeen and when they're twenty-one or twenty-two.

Being in your 30s is about discovering yourself and your body and enjoying who you are.

At sixteen I was stupid, confused and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?

My twenties were great. Who didn't have fun in their twenties? But my attention was more out there, more about the surface stuff and the cosmetic stuff. I was always thinking, 'What do I need to do?' Now in my thirties, it's, 'What do I want to do?' I've just become more solid with my own identity. So whoever wants to say their twenties are better... Yes, they're fun, especially at night - better parties, better cocktails... not better sex though. Absolutely not. And whoever says that is lying because sex in your thirties and beyond is f**king out of this world.

I've had a very specific path over the years. Sometimes they're not all we want them to be, but they create who we are.

The first long chapter of my career was almost entirely theater so that, by the time I was 30, 35, I sort of knew who I was as an actor, and I was gradually learning who I was as a human being.

As I get older, I have a clearer sense of what's important to me.

You don't realize it till you get older as an actor, but all the parts you've gotten have led you up to today - good, bad, and otherwise.

I feel offended when people bring up my four marriages. I was 19 when I first got married and I thought it would be for ever. But each of my marriages has added to my life and helped form me as a human being.