Vera Farmiga Quotations

In these times, in this harsh, rude, warring world that we live in, where most of the bloodshed is 'My god is greater than your god,' and we're fighting in the name of our god, we have to find a way to peaceably coexist, spiritually.

I'm part wood nymph. I require mountains and warm, dense patches of moss to thrive.

I think all religions can agree on certain definitions of God and concepts of God, like God being the god of love, the great 'I am' energy.

I love Saturday nights with my best friend and a big bowl of pasta, wanting a good scare, something that will say, 'Listen, your life is not as bad as this. Your life can be so much worse'.

Ruminants are a perfectly normal thing to possess when you live in upstate New York. It's just moving scenery. It's kind of like the equivalent of Great Danes. It's the way you keep your grass mowed. It's the way you keep your weed-whacking to a minimum.

Offers come all the time, but I'm pretty particular. I really have to be wowed by a character I encounter in a script, or a storyline. I really do need to feel inspiration, otherwise I'm just happy planting perennials and making goat cheese.

I look for struggle in the roles I choose - struggle and perseverance.

Sometimes I attract roles that are necessary either for personal growth or enlightenment.

I didn't grow up watching film but as a Ukrainian-American, music and stories and dance are crucial.

I have the best husband a wife could possibly have. He's the best father my children could have.

Doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. It encompasses cynicism but also genuine questioning.

The limelight is a tricky place, because you can't believe what's going on around you. You stop observing. You stop perceiving. You stop extending yourself, and you become isolated.

In the quiet moments, the discoveries are made.

I've always believed that if you are precise in your thoughts, it's not the lines you say that are important - it's what exists between the lines. What I'm compelled by most is that transparency of thought, what is left unspoken.

Someone once told me that religion is like a knife: You can stab someone with it, or you can slice bread with it.

We are all seekers in some way. There are those of us who think they have all the answers and there are those of us who may never get an answer.

I'm from the school of, 'if you want more, you have to require more from yourself.'

I am drawn to intimate, often uncomfortable portraits of a woman persevering and awakening.

Normally, I rely heavily on my director to massage me out of my actor comfort zones.

Editing is not a part of the filmmaking process I've ever been privy to as an actress.

I think maybe I was a shepherdess in a past life.

When I look at female characters, I want to recognize myself in them: my trials, my tribulations as a mother, as a lover, as a daughter.

My only real advice to Oscar nominees is, 'If you haven't actually seen a competitor's film, don't fib and say you have and blow smoke up their wahooziewhatsits.' Always best to be frank and tell them the truth.

There are women who make things better, there are women who change things, there are women who make things happen, who make a difference. I want to be one of those women.

We're all sick of holy wars and bloodshed because religion is supposed to give us life and a better life and is supposed to bring out our best self. When it results in mass destruction and hatred and anxiety, it's the antithesis I think of what religion was designed to do.

I have tender, romantic associations with upstate New York.

I think God gave us senses of humor, and we should use them.

Honestly, I think a good film is spiritual, regardless of whether its subject is faith.

I don't have a caustic sense of humor. What I find funny, that humor comes from a much gentler place.

Do I pray? Yes. Prayer is very important to me.

I can't get my knickers in a twist about my age and ageing in an industry that caters to the ids of 14-year-olds.

The biggest research of all when I do a character is self-examination. You look at yourself and you ask, 'How am I similar to this person and how am I different?'

Am I ambitious? I used to be afraid of that word but now I think ambition is a good thing.

I just can't feel lukewarm about a character. I either despise her, admire her, or don't understand her and want to understand her.

I was a Ukrainian folk dancer in my teens, and I toured the country in 1991, shortly before the break-up of the Soviet Union.

I just hate one-dimensional portrayals of religion; it's too cheap and easy to do, and ignores the nuances that go into having a belief system.

There's no wrong way to experience a film.

Whether we call it religion or faith, we all battle for a balanced integrated soul.

You earn very little money on independent films and I'm the provider for my home, so I do have to think of taking one for the accountant time and again and that means studio pictures.

I've never felt the breath of God - you can take that statement literally or metaphorically - more than when I was yearning for a personal, intimate connection to something bigger than me.

My father instilled in me - of utmost importance and innate in me is the yearning to determine for myself - to define God, to define holiness for myself.

I'm saying that the depth of exploration of the male psyche and the female psyche is uneven. I see further, deeper renderings of what it means to be a man.

I think the worst thing that can happen to a good actor is fame.

It's a very different thing, religion and faith. Religion is man-made, it's man-regulated. And faith, you can define God as you wish. But I think they're two different things.

It's true: I don't remember what life was like before parenthood.

You dont necessarily have to be religious to pray.

Your soul either feels lifted by something that you read, or it feels squashed by it.

As an actor, you're sort of the court-appointed lawyer for the character.

I come from a massive family, and the youngest is twentysomething years younger than I am, so I grew up with children.

I grew up in a Ukrainian Catholic-turned-Christian household, and that is my family's faith.

I think that films about faith made for faith-based communities have a certain tactic.

I'm hooked on Polanski's films, his psychological thrillers. I love 'Rosemary's Baby,' I love 'Repulsion.'

I've never graced the cover of a fashion magazine.

I've played a lot of mothers in my movies.

I, for one, am tired of seeing movies about men damaging each other.

We take a lot for granted as second wave feminists, what our mothers and aunts did for us.

You dont have to be gay to be attracted to your friend.

You ought to have a perspective when you're making a film.

Editing yourself is like an irksome coin toss. You've got to strip yourself of super ego and operate from the id. Maybe I've got my Freud mixed up. It's just hard to trade a beauty shot for the performance with truth and a brightly lit zit.

The more people know about you, the more face-time you get in the media, the harder your job becomes to create a character in whom people suspend disbelief.

I hate being manipulated by song. Don't tell me what I should be feeling. I don't want cellos or violins to be telling me that I should be bawling right now.

I think I always try to be accommodating and open and available and proving for my director. I love to give as many takes as they want. I love to give them as many choices as they want.

There are some times when I think acting can be a noble profession. And when those rare roles come along, like Down to the Bone, you have the opportunity to be of service.

There really are three types of 'religious' movies: the ones that make fun of it, the ones that vilify it and the ones that literally preach to the converted.

Working with children is a whole other ball game. They're like little animals. You have to keep the camera turned on them all the time. Sometimes it takes a 41-minute take to get one sentence out in a believable way.

Whether you're making a million dollar film or a $100 million film there is never enough money, there's never enough time.

My husband is my best friend; he knows my sensibilities.

I'm incredibly spiritual. There are like tens of thousands of denominations; I don't fit in any one of those denominations comfortably. But I have a very personal relationship with God.

Just because I'm telling a story about a woman losing faith is not my rebellion against what I grew up in. If anything, it really affected the way I approached the story, and in fact, approach everything. I don't judge my characters.

I grew up in a Christian home. The strictness comes with religion in general. Whether you grew up Jewish or Orthodox Jewish or Muslim, there are certain rules and regulations. But my parents instilled in me the importance of defining God for yourself.

Do I observe holy days and holidays? Yeah, the ritual is very important to me. It's part of being Ukrainian Catholic. So every holy day we're baking pierogis and not eating meat.

I'm someone who can sit in a Buddhist temple, and I can sit with Pentecostals or with Orthodox Jews, and I still feel like I am in tune with all of them.

The depth of exploration of the male psyche and the female psyche is uneven. I see further, deeper renderings of what it means to be a man.

Not just as an actress, but on a human-being level, I've experienced frustration on many different levels. [With my] career, it would be more the frustration of not always finding challenging material or inspiring material ... [Acting is] therapeutic for me. I'm pretty accommodating.

It's a delicate thing for me, with how involved I am in social media and being a part of people's lives in a way that they want me to.

I've done TV, but never where you're given this much time to live with a character, to study the tone and hone it and repair stuff, to go back and watch old episodes and go, "Oh no, that's a misstep. That's a victory. I should do more of that, less of that."

I'm thinking about anything and everything. I'm making stuff up in my head, I'm using sense memory. Sometimes when it doesn't come and you've got no choice because you're getting paid to do it, you grasp at straws. It's always easy now with my kids. I just create some "what-ifs" in my head, something horrible that would devastate me as a mother.

I always thought Uncle Vanya could be a stoned masterpiece.

Partying has never been my thing. I've been around some wild people. I've been in the same room and watched them experiment, and that's been entertaining.

My personality is just innately even-keeled. I'm not such a huge daredevil. Which is not to say I'm not a passionate woman. I don't know, maybe it's my physiological makeup, but I don't like the feeling of anything in my system, other than a glass of wine now and then.

I was very studious and square in college.

I spent a lot of time reading blogs by mothers who had children with varying degrees of neural dysfunction, from schizophrenia to all sorts of different issues. And honestly, I don't think it's different for anybody. There's no right way to make sure your child will be emotionally and mentally healthier. It's just frustrating.

I have a lot of frustration with religion, organized religion, because it's man-made, because it's man-regulated. And it has nothing to do with my relationship with God.

You know what's more difficult to do organically? Laughing. It's actually one of the hardest things to do on camera.

I'm a full-time mom. I've never felt as prepared, as before maternity.

Yeah, I think it's like any God-given gift. You writers have the gift of perception. If you don't use it, you're going to lose it. And it's the same thing with you [Lorraine], it's God-given.

It's thematic in my career, if you look at most of my choices. It is some level of exploration of maternal angst and maternal heroism.

I just want to make sure that the thing that I see in it initially, that I think it can be, is not just going to be a horror film and reduced to a jump here and a scream there. But that you can take something away from it.

I just wanted to make sure that yes, that those horror - they worked as a genre. To me, I just wanted to be touched by the film in the way that I saw plausible. Which is the story about compassion - giving and receiving it in those desperate times of need.

But I think for me, why I was drawn to the piece is, at the core of the story, it's a love story to me - between Ed and Lorraine, between these two families who are asking for help and us who are in the business of giving help.

The different tempos and yeah, it's cadence. It's the way she moves through space, it's gestures.

Whenever I wore it there were some questions whether the outfit was just too over the top. I'm like, "Do you know who you're dealing with here, and her eccentricities, her style, her flair?" These little things were sometimes those - I love it. I love having a real-life model. But I also do flush it out with my own personal experiences and my own essence, and hopefully they mesh together.

It's such a measure of your solidarity with Ed, that when you would give lectures, he would be wearing a tartan tie that matched. And I demanded that outfit, I thought it was so punk - her long skirt, she looked like a Scottish queen, so regal.

The nature of evil, the nature of it, it exists. It exists and I think within us we have the tools. If we have the will, we can combat it. I think the power is within us and it lies in our own conceptualization of God and positivity and compassion and love.

I rely on my directors, a lot. I love being directed.

I cherish each director that I have. I want to be maneuvered out of my comfort zones. I don't have the time to prepare.

When you're breastfeeding a child, you don't have the same retention as you do when you're not.

It's terrifying to be the lead. There's a moment of excitement, and then pure terror.

I love to be surprised.

Patrick sort of had a very pragmatic, practical, Ed-like approach and went down to see.