Mary-Louise Parker Quotes & Sayings

I have to hold that up as a metaphor for everything, being prepared and then being brave enough to just be there. Just listen and follow, maybe jump. Everyone leans in, it brings them into your emotional vicinity because, you said "Risk creates intimacy — Mary-Louise Parker

this right now, this is the only time I am all here and no part of me needs time travel Right — Mary-Louise Parker

I enjoy cooking and baking. Alicia Silverstone's vegan cookbook is awesome. — Mary-Louise Parker

Unless you got a really good reason, you should be nice. — Mary-Louise Parker

I don't think anyone honestly would hire me, so I don't think I have to worry but, if it was well written I would do it. I would do anything — Mary-Louise Parker

I just want to make lunches and organize my kids' playroom. — Mary-Louise Parker

I couldn't get life loud enough. — Mary-Louise Parker

I don't think you necessarily have to be part of a traditional nuclear family to be a good mother. — Mary-Louise Parker

I don't get tired of hearing that somebody liked my work. — Mary-Louise Parker

Toronto I've worked in so many times so you kind of just know every store, every hotel, every - it's really close to New York so it's awesome for my children so if I have to go home for two days it doesn't take very much time. Except for Air Canada. Air Canada is the worst part. — Mary-Louise Parker

I always wondered what people thought of it because it looked so stupid to me on the page and I loved the other finale so I thought it was going to be really stupid but some people really liked it. — Mary-Louise Parker

Faith to you was more clay than mortar, and if you could interpret the gospel, so could I. So should anyone. If God wasn't mad at you for drinking wine and chain-smoking and being a homosexual, he might forgive me for stealing a kitten and trying to hide it under a blanket in the back of our station wagon. Certainly that God was preferable to others who wouldn't let you in Heaven if you said bad words or drank Mountain Dew. — Mary-Louise Parker

I have to say, I haven't really worked with that many people in my career that I haven't liked, which I think is really rare. — Mary-Louise Parker

We're dodging bullets and this is right after we've just seen [inaudible] shot and we're running and the woman who John accused of being out to kill us and everyone thought he was kidding. When we see her she appears and she's after us. — Mary-Louise Parker

My favorite scene in all of movies is Gregory Peck in 'To Kill A Mockingbird': You see him where he's on the porch, and his face is almost completely obscured. I don't want to see his face. — Mary-Louise Parker

You can never really tell, it's kind of a red herring until you see the project I think. You just know if you like working with someone or not, and he does have a real sweetness about him, I think. — Mary-Louise Parker

be careful of thinking about people as "kinds of people"? — Mary-Louise Parker

I have a child and I don't want to be at work all the time when he's small. I want to spend time with him. — Mary-Louise Parker

I love that sensation, when you think, this is too good, I'll catch up with everyone else later. You just have to take in the truth of that expanse a few more seconds before it changes and becomes something else entirely, or before you do. — Mary-Louise Parker

I don't know if you feel conflict when you hear the phrase "new reality," or if it makes you want to throw in the towel. When you realize that the only thing to be counted on is the shifting and reestablishing of proximity, do you ever feel like, why did I bother searching in the first place? We have to rewrite ourselves again and draw all new maps. What — Mary-Louise Parker

To convey in any existing language how I miss you isn't possible. It would be like blue trying to describe the ocean. — Mary-Louise Parker

Mediocrity is underrated. — Mary-Louise Parker

There's something really sweet about the way he's playing the part and he's kind of irresistible in a way. They're both really lonely. That's kind of established from the very beginning in the movie. The way they meet is just classic, lonely losers. — Mary-Louise Parker

Letting someone you don't really like surprise you is evolved, — Mary-Louise Parker

I like to pretend that I'm a tough guy. It's kind of an admission of defeat if I have to ask for help - or even kindness. But if it doesn't come, at some point I snap and demand it. — Mary-Louise Parker

Thank you for giving me your arm and those four hours that I now understand you did not have an endless supply of. It was short but I loved our little trip. We fell in love, but the way you love a view that comes along once or twice in life. — Mary-Louise Parker

I do love my avocados, which are great for the skin. I eat pretty healthfully. — Mary-Louise Parker

You waved at Soren while I fought to look neutral because I was taken with you and slightly enraged for no reason. Enraged is the wrong word,but I felt like I wanted to kick you in the shins and then make you banana bread. I wanted to key your car and take you out for dim sum. It was admiration,passion and that voice of yours all mushing together and disarming me,making me want to smash something and kiss someone. — Mary-Louise Parker

You can tell actually when he starts to talk about his family, or his Daughters, or his Wife, and his whole face - really he's so really kind of a dear. — Mary-Louise Parker

I don't think it's that controversial. I'm really in favor of legalizing marijuana. I thought people would be more offended by [this series] than they are. I'm surprised they weren't. — Mary-Louise Parker

I'm not comfortable with getting a job by being at the right Hollywood party; I'm not a terribly sociable creature. — Mary-Louise Parker

Thank you, NASA, for keeping watch and realizing that our universe will never be anything but light-years new. I want to understand that, and I am so comforted by the fact that I can't. It only proves that some things won't allow themselves to be understood. They aren't for us to know and there's rapture in that, don't you think? Are you happy there, with your eyes glued to the heavens? You know so much, like why the ocean doesn't fall out of the sky, and that there is no upside down. There is no up. — Mary-Louise Parker

My mother is a beauty. — Mary-Louise Parker

Don't have a fall back, because if you do, you'll fall back. — Mary-Louise Parker

Thank you for being open to another more workable draft of me. It affected me profoundly. — Mary-Louise Parker

I don't often see the movies I'm in; I'm usually disappointed in myself and it only serves to make me self-conscious. — Mary-Louise Parker

I haven't read the comic book. I didn't even know there was one until about halfway though. Helen Mirren and I were talking about that actually, who also felt kind of silly. When we had to run she was like, 'Oh God, we're both going to get fired.' The running sequences, it's a particular kind of humiliation because it's fun. — Mary-Louise Parker

There's a lot of time sitting in movies, so you can put alligators in people's trailers in your spare time. So it [making a film] moves slower, which in some ways is great, because you can live with a scene and invest in it a lot. And in some ways it's hard, because sometimes you can start to lose your energy a little bit, but both are fun. — Mary-Louise Parker

I'm naked in Esquire in August. I was naked on the set the other day. I'm always naked. I'm naked right now, in fact, — Mary-Louise Parker

There was no one for you to impress and no one for you to offend. You were right there and I was afraid of how real you were, which made me question my own level of authenticity. I'd take off my clothes on the beach or spill my guts to a girl I'd never met on the bus, thinking I was uncensored and open, but I wasn't always real if I wanted someone to like me. I gravitated to those who withheld or told me who they thought I was. — Mary-Louise Parker

I never feel more useful than when I'm making my kids a bowl of soup. — Mary-Louise Parker

We are the custodians of people's memories You — Mary-Louise Parker

I go far out, maybe in a field somewhere quiet. I think of things I have done in my life that people tell me are good. I remember that I have done good — Mary-Louise Parker

Space is entirely poetic. — Mary-Louise Parker

I wrote about us while you were away in a notebook that eventually saw the end of us, but the last I wrote about that time was in ink; it was a hurried, angry scrawl reading: Time, that cold bastard, with its nearlys and untils. I think, what a shame. Time should weep for having spent me without you. — Mary-Louise Parker

I don't live in Los Angeles and I don't do a lot of superfluous press. — Mary-Louise Parker

It's the best part of the whole movie. John Malkovich with a pink pig is - you can't get better than that. Then John Malkovich alone and then you add a pink pig. — Mary-Louise Parker

I certainly was never the pretty girl at school, but I can go to a lot of different places with this face. — Mary-Louise Parker

Words are really powerful. I don't believe that axiom at all - words can absolutely hurt you. Words can wound. They can do a lot of damage. I think they can do way more damage than sticks and stones. I'll take sticks and stones. — Mary-Louise Parker

I'll tell you now before you can speak: strength is a myth. It's not what it is, when it looks like what it is. It's usually what it is when it looks like something else. It takes bravery to admit that you're petrified and keep soldiering on despite it. Oh,and, "easy"? Also a hoax! If it existed it would be sold for the same as you got it for- nothing! Ha! — Mary-Louise Parker

Yeah, when you work with somebody that famous everybody wants to know what are they like or - but I know some of the movies that I know because they're more like NOBODY'S FOOL or like that, because I don't really watch the big R movies, I haven't really seen them so much. I loved him [Bruce Willis] from his TV show and some of the smaller movies he's done. The bigger movies I start to space out in, like, there just so, I don't really watch those kind of movies so much. — Mary-Louise Parker

The theater is who I am - it's where I feel the most inspired, the most at home, the most useful. — Mary-Louise Parker

My way to combat anything is just to walk straight into it with my fists up. — Mary-Louise Parker

Well, it's kind of like that classic sort of trajectory in this kind of movie where there's conflict and they're estranged and they kind of grow to love each other but they don't show it. Then at the end - it's kind of like that. But I think the characters are more interesting than that. — Mary-Louise Parker

It's good to feel stupid sometimes and do things that are out of your comfort zone. — Mary-Louise Parker

It's because of you that I can go to any church and take whatever the service has to offer, all of it up for interpretation except kindness. — Mary-Louise Parker

My sister's fish tacos are out of control. I'd give her a restaurant if I were a gazillionaire. — Mary-Louise Parker

You were a living reminder of what I always professed to believe, that you never know what happened to someone that day, so try to cut some slack, but being bound by my own ropes I was unable to give you that. — Mary-Louise Parker

People have a problem with me being different, but that propels me forward in life. — Mary-Louise Parker

Everyone is a mass of contradictions. There are no "types" of people, — Mary-Louise Parker

I don't put myself out there, so people aren't necessarily familiar with me or my face. — Mary-Louise Parker

It's transparent, how willing we are to dismiss the intelligence of someone who rejects us, as though that renders them incapable of sound judgement. — Mary-Louise Parker

People ask me, 'Why are you doing a show on Showtime?' Because I'll do anything really, I don't really care, I'll do a show on Nickelodeon if I thought it was well written. Actually Nickelodeon's kind of awesome. — Mary-Louise Parker

Enraged is the wrong word, but I felt like I wanted to kick you in the shins and then make you banana bread. I wanted to key your car and take you out for dim sum. It was admiration, passion and that voice of yours all mushing together and disarming me, making me want smash something and kiss someone. — Mary-Louise Parker

I feel like movies, if there's any kind of budget whatsoever, there's so much sitting, and I really like to work. Otherwise my blood sugar just drops, you know, six hours sitting in a camper. — Mary-Louise Parker

With TV, there's a continuum with the crew and the cast so you feel like you have a sense of community in a way, which is similar to theater. — Mary-Louise Parker

I like A&E. I like those corny intimate-portrait things. They're so kind of ingenious and artificial and soothing. — Mary-Louise Parker

If she has given you children remind yourself every day of the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth words in this sentence. If you hurt her in ways that are irreparable I will send out people to hurt you back, sorry, but it has to be like that. Yes, you may have had a difficult childhood, but please allow me to introduce myself: Hello, I am the woman who doesn't give a shit. Make her something warm to drink in the mornings and give her time to begin speaking; only rush at her with an embrace or a gemstone. Wildflowers. A love note. Yeats. — Mary-Louise Parker

I don't really ever think about whether or not I like the characters I'm playing. I'm more into the minutiae of their behaviour or what they're doing in a certain scene. — Mary-Louise Parker

My parents have been together for 65 years. They're both really stubborn. They're not quitters. — Mary-Louise Parker

I thought the other ones were so obviously - what are we going to do if she burns down the house? The DEA, which I think was maybe the best one because she's wearing the jacket when she goes through the mirror and I think that was kind of amazing because you really weren't expecting that. There's something almost slapstick about this in a way that worried me. It was a little pratfalley with the golf club and the - but I think it probably cut together okay. — Mary-Louise Parker

We know there exists a planet with four thousand different versions of songbirds. Because that is possible and because on that same planet can exist sentient beings made up almost entirely of stardust, and because bonafide poetry erupts mightily from some of those beings, and there is music, sex, and babies that laugh in their sleep; because we are roaming a universe that may be a hologram, with another dimension consecutively projecting itself outside this construct of reality and gravity; because of all that, there is no reason why my prayers shouldn't be able to reach your mother whose name I don't even know. — Mary-Louise Parker

I hear people say, "It happened for a reason," or "It's part of God's plan," and I wish that made sense to me but it doesn't. — Mary-Louise Parker

I really prefer acting in the theater the most. In some ways TV is closer to that because there's more of a regularity to the schedule. You have to finish an episode by a certain day. Movies can just go on interminably. — Mary-Louise Parker

I don't believe in endings, happy or sad, so my relationships with you continue to this day. They are the kind of relationships you have with a pair of skis you know you'll never have to strap to yourself again. Maybe you never really liked skiing, but enjoyed being a person who could say, "Looks like I'll be hitting the slopes this weekend!" So you kept on even though it cost too much to get down a hill. Gave you windburn. I see nothing weird about keeping those skis in the basement. They offer a little nostalgia for crappier times. More importantly, they serve as a reminder that I no longer have to ski. Wake — Mary-Louise Parker

I said I don't know how to say no, I only know how to yell it. — Mary-Louise Parker

In college, my teachers were usually after me for going after comedy too much, leaning too much in that direction. — Mary-Louise Parker

Usually I'm trying to turn something around or turn it inside out and see what's underneath. I know that probably sounds incredibly vague but I never set out to be likeable or funny or anything like that. I'm just trying to tell the story in the best way that I can and serve the writer because it's really about the writer. — Mary-Louise Parker

I'm just damseling mostly. I'm not very good with a gun. — Mary-Louise Parker

Thanks to you I don't have to watch either of those scenarios play out while perched on a cloud fighting with God to let me intercede,or spend eternity aching to at least become the quivering sunbeam that lands on them one morning when they rol out of bed at age twenty-five. — Mary-Louise Parker

I just get to go to work with such great actors who are so talented, especially Elizabeth (Perkins). You are so wonderful and kind and good and wonderful and sexy and great, and I just want to make out with all of you. — Mary-Louise Parker

You mean something untranslatable. — Mary-Louise Parker

I really like the director [for Weeds]. I don't know if you've spoken to him yet but he's really, really intelligent. He was just really kind when I met him and nice and really told me why I should play the part ... and kind of really didn't argue with him. He's just really, really smart and assembled these really great people. I felt like he really knows how to enlist his intelligence to get you - I don't know - he's really hard to argue with I find. — Mary-Louise Parker

Look, I don't care if anyone likes me when it comes to my work. But I can be massively insecure in other parts of my life. — Mary-Louise Parker

The first thing I ever bought for myself was a green Lacoste shirt. — Mary-Louise Parker

I'm not saying pot is a bad thing. I know plenty of people who should be smoking pot. I'm just not one of those people. I don't think it would be the best drug for me. What am I going to do, start doing drugs at my age? It's a little late. I'm a mother of two. It's probably not the best idea for me to start getting into it now. — Mary-Louise Parker

I never know why people come up to me. I think a lot of them just get super-excited because they recognize me from TV but they don't remember where. — Mary-Louise Parker