Zoe Kazan Quotes

We were always drawing comics as kids. My brother Charles made me draw comics. I was very much under his domination. He was actually a much stronger artistic visionary than I was.

I remember being a little kid sitting in the living room with my brother and some friends from around the neighborhood, and I would sit at the piano and as they were running around the room doing different things and being silly, acting out, I would actually play the score for it - the music that went along with it.

As early as I can remember, I would put on plays with my cousin and make my dad record them. In kindergarten, I started doing the school plays, and it just continued.

Since when I was little, I would always write a script and tell my sister, 'Read this line. I'm going to film it.'

My favorite thing to do as a kid was pretend I was in the opening credits of a sitcom. As the theme song would play, I'd look up at the imaginary camera and smile as my name would flash on the screen.

The very first film I ever made, when I was seven years old, when I got my hands on a camcorder, was a remake of 'Poltergeist,' which I hadn't seen yet because my parents wouldn't allow me to. But I made my own version of it, and it starred my brother in a bed sheet.

I've been very passionate about storytelling ever since I was a kid. I really don't remember a time when I didn't want to be an actor, and ever since I could remember, I had a really extravagant imagination.

I was very dramatic as a kid. I loved to entertain. I was taking my bathing suits and painting them black and putting sparkles on them because I thought I was going to be on stage.

I had these cheap alien toys and I made up stories for them. They were space pirates. They didn’t have names so I made up names. These were the first stories I wrote. Even as a little kid I was thinking about torture.

When I was about five my dad built a stage for me in our basement. A full stage, with a curtain, a backdrop and a dressing room. There were three colored spotlights - a red one, a white one, and a blue one. Blue was for nighttime scenes, and red was for when we were in hell. If the neighborhood kids wanted to use the stage, they had to incorporate me into the play.

The ability to play pretend is something that everyone has access to; you see little kids doing it.

I like being able to play make believe as my job. I think I played make-believe growing up a little too long - probably to an inappropriate age. I played make-believe until I was, like, 13 and probably should have been doing something else. But other than that, it's fun to be able to have to learn about different people.

I remember as a kid, I was improvising and making little trophies out of different materials and going in front of the mirror, lifting the trophies and saying 'Nole was the champion!'

I remember kids used to give me a penny for drawing them a horse. I loved horses, but I couldn't have one, so I would draw a horse for myself. I would make it food and a blanket for it to wear and a place to live.

As a kid, I used to run around our garden waving a stick and pretending to be a million different people. That's why I became an actor, really.

Seeing how kids lit up when they were creating things made me think of what would be the ultimate platform for our imagination.

I was writing songs as a kid about leprechauns and Catwoman and teapots - whatever it is that little girls wanna sing about.

You know there's always that kid in your class — and every class has one — the kid who draws all the time and is really good? That was not me. I was a lousy draftsman. But as soon as I figured out that I could make things come alive, like using the corners of my math book to make flipbooks, I was hooked.

My parents would tell us to go outside and play or to do creative stuff, but television was very limited. So we used our own creativity to entertain ourselves. We were out in the woods a lot making huts and playing horses.

All kids draw some kind of cartoon characters. They just grow out of them, and I didn't

I grew up going to the theater. That was one of the nice things my mom did was she took us to plays and symphony concerts and to the museums. Theater captured my imagination. I just loved the idea of that box, which is essentially what a stage is from a certain distance, a box with all this life going on in it. So, I was eleven when I wrote my first play. Of course, it was horrible.

I have found that the person with a sense of story built in from childhood is in better shape than one who has not had stories . . One knows what stories can do, how they can make up worlds and transpose existence into these worlds. . . .One learns that worlds are made by words and not only by hammers and wires.

I read a lot, and I watch a lot of TV and film now. That's my homework. Like I said, my Netflix. I've watched Aliens a couple times this week, Dawn Of The Dead. And that's what's really cool too. It's nostalgia, because I saw these shows, these movies, a lot of them, when I was a kid, and they're different now when you watch them. I'm like, "Wow, I can't believe my family let me watch that," and "I must have missed that the first time around."

There was a big age difference between me and my brothers - about 10 years - so I was an only child for a long time. I used to hang out a lot on my own. I played a lot of weird games with a lot of imaginary people. I guess it's kind of roleplaying.

I don't know where creativity comes from, but I think everybody has the ability to be creative. I think what's important about creativity starts when you're very young and how we're allowed to experience our imagination. The people who bring us up and teach us are fundamental in either encouraging creativity or discourging creativity. My imagination was always encouraged.