My mom worked late, and I was at home a lot by myself. It was good for my imagination - and bad for it, too.
— Sarah Paulson
I'm not interested in a character's goodness. I'm interested in what makes them human.
I don't feel like a very nostalgic person. I think about the past much more clinically. When I look back and wonder, 'Why was I doing that? Was it a waste of time?' I don't beat myself up. Instead, I say, 'I'm so glad I did that, because now I really know what matters to me.'
There's some bohemian part of me where the idea of falling back on something meant I expected to fail.
Being in a hotel room and watching 'The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' is one of my great joys.
I started auditioning, and the first job I ever got was understudying Amy Ryan in 'The Sisters Rosensweig' on Broadway, directed by Daniel Sullivan. I was 18 years old.
To truly feel seen by another person makes you feel so peaceful.
If my life choices had to be predicated based on what was expected of me from a community on either side, that's going to make me feel really straitjacketed, and I don't want to feel that.
I had gone away from Twitter because before people had been so mean to me. Talking about my lisp and my enormous forehead and all these things. I do have a lisp, I do have a forehead I know you could land a plane on, it's no mystery to me. I just didn't have the skin for it.
It's OK to sit in the Golden Globe room and look around and think, 'Oh, Helen Mirren's a loser tonight, so is Nicole Kidman. Meryl Streep lost tonight. Jessica Lange didn't win.' If you're gonna be in the company of losers, that's the company to be in.
My sister's a big karaoke person, and she's never been able to get me to do it.
I love the idea of people walking away with the idea of hope and possibility.
If you heard me sing, you would just plug your ears and run, screaming, the other way. I promise.
The idea of being on a show where each season stands alone, and you can come back the next year and show an entirely different aspect of your personality or your talent or your anything is an enormous gift that you rarely get in television.
I'd love to be in the '70s. I'd love to have a big, long wig parted down the middle with flat-ironed hair and bell-bottoms. They're actually very flattering for my figure. The wider the leg, the better for a person with a booty.
My mother had a cotillion, but she wanted to be bohemian.
If I'm not moved from one spot to another, internally, while I'm witnessing it, reading it, consuming it, whatever, I don't know why we're being asked to the party.
Looking back is a way to sharpen the focus on the things you want to change in your life. I think there's something about nostalgia that really puts a fine point on the here-and-now, and that can be incredibly fascinating and interesting and engaging for the mind.
My mom moved to New York City alone with a kid on each hip to try to live an authentic artistic life.
I moved to L.A. and did a two-part episode of this British export show called 'Cracker.' I kissed Josh Hartnett. I think Josh Hartnett's first onscreen kiss was me, unfortunately.
All of my friends went to college, and I got a job at Circle Pizza, where I worked for 24 hours. I had to call my mother four times to ask her how to spell Parmesan. I'm not kidding. I was a terrible speller.
I had a complicated home life, and my teachers, predominantly my theater teachers and my English teachers, were very dedicated to taking care of me in a particular way. And in doing so, I think I developed a very easy rapport with people older than myself.
My choices in romantic partners have not been conventional, and therefore, the idea that it is 'other' makes it compelling.
I am a person who is not mated.
All my friends went to the Madonna concert when I was in, maybe, the 9th grade, and my mother refused to let me go.
To me, most of life kind of lives in the grey and I don't just mean morally. I just mean kind of everything. If things were black and white it would be a lot clearer as to what to do all the time.
The thing I worry about for myself is I spend a lot of time alone, and another person comes around and you're like, 'What are you doing here? Get out of here.'
I was constantly, always and forever, trying to perform the musical 'Annie' for anyone who would listen, and I have a terrible singing voice. It was the first thing that made me think I wanted to be an actress.
I think it's very important for people to not judge the people you're playing. You have to find a way to love them because their story is theirs. I just don't think there would be any use in that.
I work in the '60s more than I've done anything else. I did a movie, called 'Down with Love', in the '60s. I did a movie for HBO about the Johnson administration in the '60s.
My choices in life have been unconventional, and that's my business. But I do want to live responsibly and truthfully without hiding.
'American Horror Story' is my home. It's the place I feel the most comfortable.
We're constantly, as human beings, trying to understand why we do what we do and how we got to wherever we find ourselves today. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to look back and go, 'I can't believe I spent one day with that person, much less two years.'
I like to go into an audition room, particularly when they think I'm not right for a part, and really fight for it. There's something so exciting and challenging about proving to yourself that you can pull it off.
I did an episode of 'Law & Order,' where I literally didn't move my neck because I thought you couldn't move your head on camera.
The mythology is that from chaos comes great work. I actually used to think that when I was younger, and I no longer think that anymore.
There's a poignancy to being with someone older. I think there's a greater appreciation of time and what you have together and what's important, and it can make the little things seem very small. It puts a kind of sharp light mixed with a sort of diffused light on something.
Sometimes I think on television, you use maybe a tenth of what you are able to do. So it's nice to go, 'Well, I'm gonna take two months and reinvest in acting and storytelling.' You don't get to do that on television.
I've never been on a show that's run for more than a season.
I've only been to one concert in my life.
To not have any hope is where things start to get really bleak. Things are possible. The impossible can be possible.
I usually feel like the role comes to you to sort of illuminate some piece of where you are in your life. I feel like I myself am a single woman and I'm childless - by choice - at this point, and I don't know what will happen.
I'm interested in telling the character's story, not my beliefs, political or otherwise.
No, I'm not a Republican working in Hollywood, I am a Democrat.
