Top 35 Greta Gerwig Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’ve never had a plan, I’ve always done things from instinct.”

— Greta Gerwig

2. “You keep learning how to let go and to live the life that you actually have, as opposed to the life you thought you were going to have.”

— Greta Gerwig

3. “Just because my dreams are different than yours, it doesn’t mean they’re unimportant.”

— Greta Gerwig

4. “I like people who love books and movies and art and want to talk about it all the time, because that’s basically what I want to talk about. Intellectuals that are funny.”

— Greta Gerwig

5. “Let your characters talk to each other and do things. Spend time with them – they’ll tell you who they are and what they’re up to.”

— Greta Gerwig

6. “I live in New York, and I love New York as well, but I think Los Angeles is a place where if you have the right person with you, there are all these little worlds that you would never guess by just looking at the exterior of what the city is.”

— Greta Gerwig

7. “I love shooting in New York because I love the city. Ultimately, I like doing it there and the city is important to the story, but it can be hard to shoot where you live too because it is so all-absorbing.”

— Greta Gerwig

8. “I like movies about women behaving badly, because women behave badly just like men, and we’re not always adorable and cute about it.”

— Greta Gerwig

9. “You feel sadness for time passing. New York is a city that keeps reinventing itself, and I love it so much.”

— Greta Gerwig

10. “I like things that look like mistakes.”

— Greta Gerwig

11. “There are a million little things, but one of the best ways to get to know characters is to just put them in situations and see what they say.”

— Greta Gerwig

12. “I love just seeing shots of New York inside of a fictional movie that are not controlled. I do not like shots with extras, I have to say. I don’t mind extras in other scenes, but I love New York City streets just as they look. I don’t even care if someone looks at the camera. It doesn’t bother me.”

— Greta Gerwig

13. “I had dreams, but I didn’t have the sense that they would necessarily work out. They seemed very far-fetched.”

— Greta Gerwig

14. “Women. They have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition. And they’ve got talent as well as just beauty. And I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it. But I’m so lonely.”

— Greta Gerwig

15. “I think it’s really hard to work in a city where you live too, because I get so absorbed with the movie that I become a bad friend and a bad participant in my own life.”

— Greta Gerwig

16. “I didn’t know the city at all, but I was so happy to be in New York I cried. I was so excited.”

— Greta Gerwig

17. “I think in theater the playwright is king. Those words are unchangeable. They are the reason that everything else flows from.”

— Greta Gerwig

18. “Using the energy in a scene can really cut the fat off of something and streamline it. It can make it work for you and activate it for you in a way.”

— Greta Gerwig

19. “When I did plays in high school and college, I never remember memorizing my lines, but once I had blocking, I had all my lines memorized. Once I had movement associated with words, it was fine. Before I had blocking, it was just text on a page. Once it became embodied, it was much easier.”

— Greta Gerwig

20. “I’m not saying that everyone needs to be celibate, but you don’t need a romance to complete a story about a woman.”

— Greta Gerwig

Featured in: Romance Quotes

21. “In college, it’s very easy to maintain your female friendships because you’re in such close proximity all the time.”

— Greta Gerwig

22. “I can say I’m a relationship person, and I like relationships. I think I also like relationships because then you don’t have to date because dating is horrible.”

— Greta Gerwig

23. “When I felt like I was looking down the barrel of nothing on the horizon it was hard for me.”

— Greta Gerwig

24. “I’m just a relationship girl. I fall in love and I usually have long relationships. I like getting to know people well and having substantive, long relationships.”

— Greta Gerwig

25. “We would go down to Riverside, California, which is very poor now, but that’s where my grandfather grew up. He grew up during the Depression in Riverside.”

— Greta Gerwig

26. “Getting bad reviews or doing something thats not great is also really good for you as an actor. It also makes me feel as an actor that Ive earned my stripes a bit.”

— Greta Gerwig

27. “We mothers stand still so that our daughters can look back and see how far they’ve come.”

— Greta Gerwig

28. “Movies are now more often watched on the small screen anyway. But at least for me, what got lost in that is the difference in the medium.”

— Greta Gerwig

29. “I don’t do well when I don’t work.”

— Greta Gerwig

30. “I’m not really capable of memorizing stuff without moving around, that’s how I do it.”

— Greta Gerwig

31. “Sometime female characters, especially in the genre of something that people consider rom-com, make mistakes in a cute way or they’re a mess in a way that’s palatable. I like that.”

— Greta Gerwig

32. “If you’re with one person, then you don’t have to meet other people. It’s like when you’re acting in a movie, you don’t have to audition for other movies. I prefer that.”

— Greta Gerwig

33. “I like acting and things when I like the writing. If I don’t like the writing, I don’t like acting. I think in some ways everything starts for me from the place of writing.”

— Greta Gerwig

34. “I think as an actress, I prefer having a character on the page. It allows you to be more invested in actually creating a whole person. It’s easier when you’re not trying to come up with your next line on the spot.”

— Greta Gerwig

35. “In relationships, you learn a million things. I’m sure a therapist can tell you about it.”

— Greta Gerwig

36. “The economy is rough. I think that affects everyone from big filmmakers to tiny filmmakers.”

— Greta Gerwig

37. “That anger that creates a kind of certainty which is very dangerous that gives way to a little bit of doubt which then uncovers of course there’s pain and then once the pain takes over then this hope of maybe I’ll get back in time and then realizing it’s too late.”

— Greta Gerwig

38. “I like making films!”

— Greta Gerwig