• Stana: (on her parents raising her and her siblings) They educated us. They inspired us. They challenged us. We challenged them. They let us travel. They gave us lessons: piano, ballet, karate, and so on. They are ambitious. They’re fabulous parents and I’m really fortunate to have them.

• Stana: It makes it weird to work in this industry sometimes. When I need to get a moment of perspective, when I feel as if I’m getting ridiculous about something, I’ll just go away and try to communicate or become in communion with truth, and then I realize how ridiculous all these worries are. They mean nothing! In 300 years what will any of us or our little problems mean to people.

• Stana: When I was growing up, my parents encouraged me to pick a path that was safe and sane.

• Stana: (about working on “Quantum of Solace”) It was a blast! I really wanted to be a part of that film, and was up for the role of Strawberry Fields originally, but they felt I wasn’t right for it, plus I didn’t want to play someone who got killed, and everyone gets killed in that bloody movie!

• Stana: Acting was always the focus. It’s weird, I was asked as a little kid by parents’ friends, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ I think I was four years old, and I said, ‘I want to be an actress.’ I always knew.

• Stana: As an actor, I feel like you’re asked to live life as vibrantly as possible.

• Stana: The luxury of creativity wasn’t afforded to my parents because they had to build a life, and they had to survive, so I feel very lucky that I’ve gotten to pursue a creative life.

• Stana: (on her siblings) We’re all oddballs doing different things in the world, and they’re all on their way to growing into really interesting adults, although I don’t know if any of us will ever really be adults, because we’re all really strange. (laughs)

• Stana: (about working on “Castle”) That’s a whole new experience, the TV world and the hours you put into TV versus film. We’re shooting 10 pages in a day, we’re there from 12 to 17 hours in a day, and that’s crazy for me. And you have to be on because you’re in every shot. It was definitely a stamina-builder but I enjoyed it so much and I learned so much but I can’t walk away from it without saying how lucky I am.

• Stana: For actors, every time we do a new role, it’s kind of like entering into a new sandbox. The only thing that you can hope for is that the person on the other side of the sandbox is willing to bounce the ball back to you.

• Stana: (revealing she practiced lesbian sex scenes for the movie “Feast of Love” with Selma Blair) We rehearsed our love scene quite a bit in a private room together. We both looked at the bed, looked at each other and walked into the room and went at it. As a kisser, I would say Selma was very titillating. It was my first time kissing a woman and I had a great time with her. But I reconfirmed to myself that I’m 100 per cent heterosexual.

• Stana: Men should never marry their muse. It ruins the illusion. edit »