Ellen page quotes

Judging people you don't know for things you don't understand is just really stupid.

The relationships I've had with my girl friends are so powerful and meaningful. Without them I truly don't know what I'd do.

I've always been drawn to stories and telling them; whether it was through being a part of theater when I was a little kid, or film, or with music, there's just been an innate desire to feel that connection.

I am a feminist and I am totally pro-choice, but what's funny is when you say that people assume that you are pro-abortion. I don't love abortion but I want women to be able to choose and I don't want white dudes in an office being able to make laws on things like this. I mean what are we going to do - go back to clothes hangers?

I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission. I suffered for years because I was scared to be out. My spirit suffered, my mental health suffered and my relationships suffered. And I'm standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of that pain.

Love is the most incredible gift to give and to receive as a human being.

By focusing on the community, you can learn more about the whole country.

Sometimes I see movies and I get almost angry - because I'm like, I can never make that movie. It stems from a jealousy, but from a good kind of jealousy. It's inspirational.

Now I'm able to align my work and creative life with who I am.

I have trouble sometimes watching actors - even when they do a great job - with an accent. It kind of removes me, somehow. And maybe at some point, yeah, it could be a really cool experience. It's not something that I consciously think, "Oh yeah, I want to do a movie with an accent." Not to say that it couldn't happen.

I call myself a feminist when people ask me if I am, and of course I am 'cause it's about equality, so I hope everyone is. You know you're working in a patriarchal society when the word "feminist" has a weird connotation.

I think it's obvious when you're watching a movie, and there's people fighting or someone's slipping on the side of the building, that it's fake and it really removes you from it.

I wish transphobia, biphobia, homophobia didn't exist, and I wish that's what the show could just be, but sadly that's not the situation around the world.

Mind you, Roman Holiday - which is kind of a romantic comedy - is one of my favorite films, and I think Audrey Hepburn is absolutely phenomenal in that movie.

This world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another.

I don't want to become unhealthily attached to what I do. I'm grateful for what I do, but I also want to be able to be OK when I'm not doing it.

I want to make activism a bigger part of my life, while hopefully maintaining the opportunity to help out causes that I really care about. And being an actor allows me to do that. Shooting a Cisco commercial allows me to do that. I mean, doing all these things allows me to talk about these issues. But don't think there aren't those moments where I'm like, "What am I doing? I have to quit my job and chain myself to a tree." Believe me, I have those moments.

If we took just 5 minutes to recognize each other's beauty, instead of attacking each other for our differences. That's not hard. It's really an easier and better way to live. And ultimately, it saves lives. Then again, it's not easy at all. It can be the hardest thing, because loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves. I know many of you have struggled with this. I draw upon your strength and your support, and have, in ways you will never know.

I don’t believe in eye-for-an-eye. The most incredible, sustainable, beautiful movements have been non-violent movements of civil disobedience.

I think people who work and being alive and paying your bills and feeding your kids is hard. It's hard to have the space. Quite frankly, I'm in a privileged position to think about things, to read about things and to educate myself about things. A lot of people just don't have the time.

Scientists and religious leaders, activists and first nation leaders, CEOs of corporations and actors, all of us need to come together right now, because the planet is in a lot of pain.

I guess I notice things as a woman just in the way I'm spoken to.

Yeah, people following me down the street and at the airport and all that. I can't imagine what it must be like for people who are, you know, actually famous.

When we're growing up there are all sorts of people telling us what to do when really what we need is space to work out who to be.

I really hope that we'll have a sustainable future on this planet, I really do. So I probably geek out mostly about learning more about how potentially we can hopefully make that happen, hopefully we're not too far lost.

I'm kind of getting more excited about developing my own stuff, or getting involved early in projects and doing my best to make things that I care about happen.

I love travel shows. I love Anthony Bourdain. I love No Reservations. I always learn so much, and I wanted to see one from a gay perspective that explored LGBT communities around the world.

When I feel strongly about something, I'm not so quiet.

You have ideas planted in your head, thoughts you never had before, that tell you how you have to act, how you have to dress and who you have to be. I have been trying to push back, to be authentic, to follow my heart, but it can be hard.

Loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves.

The thing I like about acting is being able to lose yourself completely in someone else.

Usually, when you're in a movie, you're disconnected from it. You're never going to feel what you felt when you made it.

But I've never been really rebellious. I've got a lot of support and I'm not pushed so hard that I feel like I'm going to burn out, which is what happens to a lot of actors in their early twenties.

Love, the beauty of it, the joy of it and yes, even the pain of it, is the most incredible gift to give and to receive as a human being. And we deserve to experience love fully, equally, without shame and without compromise.

One of those things where immediately when you started reading it, you knew it was something special and then the more you read, the more it surprised you, and the more you realized it was devoid of stereotype .

I think there's a tremendous amount of guilt that goes on between mothers and daughters, no matter how good or bad their relationships are.

You can choose who you want to be the hero [in Hard Candy], but youll be second-guessing yourself -- theres just no right answer. Our society is obsessed with finding good and finding evil, but I think were all capable of anything.

I'm not a fancy person. I love small spaces. I like tiny cars. I don't buy things, aside from music and books. I don't get loads of attention and maybe it's because I'm kind of boring. I don't think I'm boring, but I have different interests. I don't go out much, not because I'm hiding but because I'm not a big drinker. I go out and have a good time, I go to concerts and stuff.

To be in a position, at my age, where I am financially independent, I can help develop things, I can promote stuff that I believe in, I can say no a lot and spend time writing - that is a gift.

I find a lot of people say, “Oh organic and local’s expensive and I just don’t have time.” And I’m like, well how much TV do you watch? Where are your priorities right now? I always take the time to eat well and eat locally because it’s common sense.

I love playing roles that are physical, absolutely love. Whether it's just that kind of basic level of physicality or whether it's stunts.

I'm a tomboy from Nova Scotia.

The idea behind it did come out of my love for travel shows. I loved them as a little kid and I loved Anthony Bourdain, but I really did want to see one about LGBTQ communities and culture and the specific country that we visit. Of course it is about the joys and the triumphs and the nightlife, but sadly, unfortunately, it's also about the discrimination that people face, because that's the reality.

I'm a huge Sissy Spacek fan.

I think the Smart Car is awesome. The only problem is I've been on the freeway and felt like I was going to be blown away like a Tim Hortons coffee cup, so I may have to upgrade to a Mini Cooper - something a little stronger.

In a lot of states LGBT people can be fired for just being gay or for just being trans. That's totally legal.

You think you're in a place where you're all 'I'm thrilled to be gay, I have no issues about being gay anymore, I don't feel shame about being gay,' but you actually do. You're just not fully aware of it. I think I still felt scared about people knowing. I felt awkward around gay people; I felt guilty for not being myself.

I'm actually just playing honest, whole young women.

No matter what character your play. I feel like whenever anyone is honest and whole and well-written, you're going to be able to connect to that person because we're all kinda made up of the same stuff and I think that's always one of the really powerful things about approaching each individual character and role and film.

I think the name came [of the show 'Gaycation'] out of the fact that a lot of people just don't know - they don't know what so many people face around the world or even in their own country, where there's a variety of experience, and despite the incredible progress we've seen, that progress hasn't necessarily reached everyone. I wanted to kind of have this title to have you be open to the experience, and then you enter it and you do see the realities.

Who knows, maybe I'm just a stubborn jerk? Maybe the other people who do stuff they don't want to do, maybe they're doing the right thing. Who am I to say? I'm just doing my thing and being myself, and I've been given the incredible, fortunate opportunity to play roles that I frickin' care about and enjoy playing. And it might not last forever. That's okay. That's what it is.

And I've shot in Prince Edward Island winters, I mean, I've shot in some intense, intense temperatures.

I wish I was a teenager in the 1970s.

We became so close [with Rachel Evan Wood], in the process of leading up to making the film [Into the Forest ]. We were saying goodbye to each other, wrapping the film, and we knew we'd be seeing each other again.

I grew up working in Canada so everything was low budget.

I love sport, I grew up playing sports, that's all I did, and it is so invigorating now that I'm supposedly adult to learn something completely new, from the bottom up.

Why are vegans made fun of while the inhumane factory farming process regards animals and the natural world merely as commodities to be exploited for profit?

Diablo Cody wasn't writing a script about a 16-year girl that got an abortion. She was writing a script about a 16-year old girl that got pregnant, decided to have the baby and give it to a young yuppy uptight couple for adoption. That's what the movie is about.

I'd ice-skated before, because I'm Canadian and that's what you do as a kid, but I'd never, ever been on quad skates.

You hear things like, ‘People shouldn’t know about your life because you’re creating an illusion on-screen.’ But I don’t see other actresses going to great lengths to hide their heterosexuality. That’s an unfair double standard.

As a girl, you're supposed to love Sleeping Beauty. I mean, who wants to love Sleeping Beauty when you can be Aladdin?

Climate change that is occurring right now is causing so much suffering all around the world. Whether it's adding 30 million people to the "at risk of starvation" list in 2008, whether it's the floods in Pakistan, or entire cultures at risk of disappearing, or desertification in Africa - all these things that are currently being caused by climate change. I think it's something that a lot of people want to figure out: how to make the shift, how to help. It seems like such an overwhelming problem.

When I was 5, someone thought it was smart to let me watch The People Under the Stairs. It might not have even been that scary, but I do remember skinned people in cages under the stairs and a man who lived in a wall without a tongue… and that’s why I cry after sex.

I've been in a few movies that really have the tendency to polarize people, and I kind of like that. I kind of like anything that pushes people's buttons. People will always take things as they want, and project stuff on it - it's just kind of what people do. Whether it's violence or teen pregnancy, whatever.

I just don't think I'm special because I'm an actor and I never would. Of course I take what I do seriously because I love doing it, and I love being in films and making films, but I don't take myself seriously.

I was maybe 10 or 11 when I saw 'Titanic.' And, yes, I was a fan. I loved it.

It's weird because here I am, an actress, representing - at least in some sense - an industry that places crushing standards on all of us. Not just young people, but everyone. Standards of beauty. Of a good life. Of success. Standards that, I hate to admit, have affected me.

Scientists and religious leaders, activists and first nation leaders, CEOs of corporations and actors, all of us need to come together right now, because the planet is in a lot of pain. My job doesn’t always feel like an integral part of the change that needs to occur. If I can offer, in my profession, to do things that are going to allow more people to connect with certain issues, then I hope it’s useful.

Sometimes something will be happening in pop culture and a movie will be right there, so you'll have this perception that maybe the movie got there first. But in reality, culture gets there first.

There's no big budget Canadian movie. Whatever movies are big budget in Canada come from the states. Or also have states financing. Everything's pretty small.

If you're a girl and you don't fit the very specific vision of what a girl should be, which is always from a man's perspective, then you're a little bit at a loss.

I don't know why people are so reluctant to say they're feminists. Could it be any more obvious that we still live in a patriarchal world when feminism is a bad word?

You should've gone to China, you know, 'cause I hear they give away babies like free iPods. You know, they pretty much just put them in those t-shirt guns and shoot them out at sporting events.

I think a lot of the time in films, men get roles where they create their own destiny and women are just tools, supporters for that.

I’m a huge fan of the program Democracy Now, which is hosted by Amy Goodman, and I subscribe to the podcast.

We are just trying to do the best possible job we can. We're not perfect. All you can do is trust the positive intention behind it, and we're always going to work to, hopefully, get better and better.

X-Men is massive, like nothing I've ever experienced. But great in its own way.

There’s obviously a lot of tragedy in comedy; I really enjoy the paradox of what a really good comedy is.

I just love it so much [acting]. When I get passionate, I’ll give you everything until I collapse. That’s not in any ’Look at me, I’m a saint’ kind of way. It’s very selfish in a way. I’m doing this really awesome exploration, and it’s like a drug, because I completely disappear.

Now, I try not to read gossip as a rule. But the other day, a website ran an article with a picture of me wearing sweatpants on the way to the gym. And the writer asked, 'Why does this petite beauty insist on dressing like a massive man?' Because I like to be comfortable.

I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to make the show, and that it is in alignment with what I'm interested in, with what I read about. For me, it just felt like an organic step - of course, I'm thinking I want a show that allows for more representation for the community and shows the struggles people face, especially when we're hearing all this political rhetoric - to have a way to show how much this affects people lives.

I actually never got badly injured - I'm tough as frickin' nails.

I'm not naive to the fact that I'm an out gay actor.

I didn't really play dress up when I was a kid, and I'm really T-shirt and jeans-y.

There are moments when you are, um, encouraged to dress a certain way. But I can't. It just erodes my soul. That's no criticism to girls who can wear a tiny dress and kill it - that's awesome. People always attribute being a feminist to hating girls being sexual, and that's not it at all. I'm just not into it.

Of course you have days that are long, you're tired, and things aren't working out, and you can get frustrated, but I would say any of the things that make it less glamorous or cause some complexity or turn you down the road you weren't expecting to go down is a part of the thrill.

I'm not good at watching stuff that I'm in at all. I should stop. I shouldn't watch something for the first time with a room full of people at Sundance. It's not a good idea.

I don't really want to do the Hollywood thing, I think you ought to try to say something with your movies.

I don't care if people like my character. I just want them to think about the movie's message.

I hate how box-office failures are blamed on an actress, yet I don't see a box-office failure blamed on men.

The more time went by, the more something just happened, an Oh my god - I want to love someone freely and walk down the street and hold my girlfriend's hand.

I'm really passionate about music - I get really emotionally connected, probably in a weird way.

It's much simpler to be tortured on camera or to be filmed losing your mind. Whereas a script that has characters who are honest, witty and genuine is often much harder to act.

I've never been to Ireland and I've always wanted to go.

It's really crucial to achieve that balance with a film like this, cause it is unique and witty and then there's the tendency to force that. It becomes contrived and I know the feeling like, give me a fork that I can stab in my eye in those kinds of movies.

There are a lot of things I love about acting and one of the things I love the most is, here you are taking words off a page, working with someone you might have met just a week before, and somehow you're creating a moment that separates itself from space and time. You feel an incredible rush when you have that moment with another actor. You can feel it bounce off one another. Every take you do can reveal different things that were hiding. And things outside the story get revealed to you, too. It's an incredible way to work and to experience a story.

I think the bottom line is that we have to learn from what's going on in other countries. We have to learn from what people are doing to and live fully in really dire, hard circumstances, and then compare that to our own experience.

I’m never going to be considered brave for playing a straight person, and nor should I be.

That's one of my favorite songs of all time. It's so beautiful. It's an old song, sung by Nina Simone. This is the Cat Power cover. We pushed hard to get it and were lucky. It's so stunning.

If you're perpetuating discrimination, you're perpetuating inequality.

This world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another. If we took just five minutes to recognize each other's beauty instead of attacking each other for our differences - that's not hard - it's really an easier and better way to live.

I love nicknames. It makes me feel loved. It makes me feel less alone in this world.

If you are a LGBTQ person, if you're going to travel somewhere, you do need to be mindful of where you're going, particularly depending on the country. That's just something unfortunately you need to think about. It's something you need to think about if you're a woman, it's something to think about particularly if you're a trans woman, and the problems a lot of trans people face when they're travelling.

And I think it's really easy for people to point out hypocrisy in people's lives.

I have trouble sometimes watching actors - even when they do a great job - with an accent.

I didn't even think about it when I read the script and then shooting their movie and someone was like "boy, press is going to be fun". And I didn't really know what they were talking about because to me it's just a film shows it as an extremely viable option which is obviously the most important thing for young individuals.

I feel like we've inherited modern infrastructure, and I could run away from it and become a full-time activist, or I can try to do my job, and try to talk about things I care about, and be able to do something like sponsor a topsoil conference in Nova Scotia, and talk about Bill McKibben, and narrate a documentary about the vanishing of the bees, and try to navigate my way through this world the best way possible. That's what I'm trying to figure out. Probably like many people right now.

I think, because I've been working for a while, I've been working since I was ten, I had the fortune of reading a lot, a lot of scripts.

The quality most important to me, in the films I make, is honesty.

The word responsibility is right, and doing everything you can to educate yourself and learn and be aware.

I think the most terrifying things I've seen have been created by human beings in reality.

I grew up playing sports, but now I feel like I can't, because if I get injured, I'll impair whatever film I'm working on.

Movies don't necessarily change culture. I don't know if we know for sure if movies change culture but we know for sure that they reflect culture.

I always take the time to eat well and eat locally because it's common sense.

If you can really hear more of the root cause, maybe there are ways that we can get beyond it, or destroy it, actually.

Absolutely, I think coming out has allowed me to align who I am with with my creative self.

I'm not used to being in front of a camera as myself. I'm not used to watching myself as myself.

Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility.

We're trying, despite having done research and having obviously preconceived ideas, we try our best to be as open-hearted as possible, and try to create context. So that's always going to be the challenge, making a program like 'Gaycation', and we are always thinking about it, reflecting on it, and doing our best to show the whole picture as much as possible in a 45-minute span. Hopefully that comes across.

It's just something we're talking about and thinking about all the time, reflecting on our privilege - the privilege of what it means even be able to travel.

I think that is funny to say because I've always loved her work and her strength and vulnerability, and the intensity of Evan's [Rachel Wood] performances. And to know her as a friend, know her as someone who we just have fun, whatever, and then see how present she is when she's working and how powerful she is. It was really awesome to get to sort of go into this different dimension with each other.

I feel lucky that Viceland wanted to make it, and I'm producing more than one film with LGBT characters and stories and it's because it's what I'm interested in. I'm not going to read a script and say, 'They're not gay, I'm not going to do it,' but I am interested in playing more gay people, because I've only played one gay person, and I've done a fair amount of movies, and I am interested in those stories. So for me, there's no should-I-or-shouldn't-I. It all feels natural.

I think it's really easy for people to point out hypocrisy in people's lives. It's like yeah, I get on planes a lot, and I drank from a plastic water bottle today - you know what I'm saying? A lot of people would just be like, "Oh, you're a hypocrite. You live in an ecovillage for a month, and then you fly around the world to talk about a movie." Don't think that I don't think about those things! Don't think that that's not, like, a quandary in my life. It can be a pretty intense ethical dilemma. I think it's about figuring out, you know, navigating life.

It's already not as easy, in the sense that interesting roles for girls and women tend to be few and far between. That's just the reality that I think most people would agree with. So that can be frustrating. I just get sent so many things that are like, "So, here's another story about a guy...." But that's just what it is. I'm kind of getting more excited about developing my own stuff, or getting involved early in projects and doing my best to make things that I care about happen.

I've become really interested in permaculture, simplifying my life and doing everything I can to develop more of a sustainable lifestyle.