Each step of the way I'm learning. When I leave an interview, I learn whether I feel, 'Oh, that was nice,' or that made me feel like a little piece of me was taken. It's a line that is always on the edge of being crossed, and once you cross it, what's next?

My life is scheduled to the minute. I used to be notoriously hard to get a hold of. But now, it would be irresponsible for me to say, 'I'm not checking my phone.'

I was nervous to even talk to other kids in my class. I would hide in my room when my parents had people over.

I found I could perform in front of 200 people, but I would still feel nervous having a one-on-one conversation.

I was not a child star. I was more like a young auditioner.

The moments that I feel a huge sense of accomplishment are actually the smaller moments, not really the bigger ones, the televised ones.

The constant is always mythologies and the very first stories that we have. All of the movies that last, that you return to, the movies that struck you as a kid and continue to open up to you 10 years later and 10 years after that - those are the movies I want to make. Those things are eternal.

I still have moments when I close myself in, but I wouldn't be on the path that I am with the career that I've had if I didn't have a deep understanding of the sense of my inner freedom.

It's very rare when we are in control of everything. Sure, I can learn my lines, I can know my character really well, but there are so many factors going on throughout the day.

There is so much to be gained from adulthood! Feelings just become so much deeper. The feeling of sadness and loss is much deeper than when you were a kid, but the feelings of love and happiness have also so much more dimension when you get older... That is what's so hard and exciting about being a human being.

We have to choose every day to be active participants. To wake up in the morning and choose this life and make something of it is an incredible thing. Not many living creatures have that option. We have so many opportunities and options - it's a huge burden, but it's also the most freeing part of our lives.

I won't do things for money. I can't.

Maybe it goes away, but this is the way I've chosen to live: I want to go down or rise up as an artist. I don't want to get swept up in lipstick or whatever the hell.

I think it is the fact that I want to quit that keeps me going. It's very complicated. But I think part of this whole exploration with every job that I do is, in terms of overcoming fear and by overcoming the fear, I feel so much more complete, and I learn something new about myself.

Lately, I've been getting too much attention with the Met Gala and work going so well that I try to find rejection in my day. I'll seek out someone on the street or at the farmers' market and ask for something where I know they'll say no. No one likes rejection, but it's real. And I don't want to lose that feeling.

My identity was tangled up in the parts that I had played since I was a child. I would go through my closet and only see audition clothes: Brie looking older, Brie looking '60s, Brie looking '40s, Brie looking younger in the future.