By Megan Riedlinger
8:21am PDT, Apr 24, 2017
We adore Kristen Bell! The actress manages to make balancing her career, her marriage to Dax Shepard, and raising two daughters, Lincoln, 4, and Delta, 2, seem effortless — but she also always manages to keep it real in interviews. In honor of her latest flick, "How to Be a Latin Lover," hitting theaters on April 28, 2017, we've rounded up her best quotes on marriage, motherhood and more! Keep reading to see them all…
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"Motherhood right-sized everything for me. I'm happier, and I was pretty happy before… I can now confirm having them is absolutely unmissable. Having kids feels like that first seventh-grade crush that overwhelms every molecule in your body, but it's permanent." —Kristen Bell, to the "Today" show in April 2015
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"All of our considerations pre-babyville were: 'We love our life.' 'We love our freedom.' 'Are we too selfish to be responsible for another human?' Sometimes when we would spend time with our friends' kids, we'd leave and go, "Let's wait." We have had a few friends with rabid children! But then we decided that everyone can't be wrong. The consensus from everyone is that it's the best thing you will ever do in your life. Dax and I put a lot of stock in that, and they were right." —Kristen Bell, to Redbook in August 2013
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On being 'that' mom that can balance work and motherhood: "I will tell you how she does it! She has boundaries. She doesn't go into work and say, 'I'm here for anything you need!' I say I need to be out of here at 3 because at 3:30 my kid's got a recital. And as much as I love this job, my daughter is much more important to me than you." —Kristen Bell, to The Daily Beast in September 2016
"I feel stupid sometimes. That's a truthful insecurity. I am around so many talented artists and intellectuals and creative people. I spend a lot of time with people that are smarter than me. So one of my truthful insecurities is that I feel stupid a lot." —Kristen Bell, to CBS News in July 2016
"Our relationship wasn't perfect. We had a couple years of fighting and of growing pains and hating each other, then loving each other and going to couples therapy and we worked it out… We earned each other." —Kristen Bell, to "Entertainment Tonight" in November 2015
"I kept saying to Dax in all sincerity during my pregnancy, 'I just don't know how I'm going to like [first daughter Lincoln] as much as I like the dogs.' I was being serious. Because I f—— love my dogs; they are my children. I love people the more I know them, and I didn't know her. It could've been a water bottle in my belly, that's about how connected I felt to her during my pregnancy. But within about 24 hours after she came out, my hormones reset, and they reprogrammed my feelings about her." —Kristen Bell, to Flare in November 2013
"I still want a career. Lincoln will always be No. 1, but I think if you can cut that cord of obsessiveness, then you can work and be a good mother and wife." —Kristen Bell, to Redbook in July 2013
"There are days when I'm completely sick of him, and there are days when he is completely sick of me. But we've chosen to love one another and to be a team. We've learned how to communicate and argue in a really healthy, respectful way." —Kristen Bell, to Bustle in April 2016
"How about this: I once read a blog that said I had thick calves. It made me feel so insecure. But guess what? I have thick calves, and the blogger was right. What was I going to do, lose sleep over it? I come from a stocky breed of Ohio farmers. Cankles are in the bloodline! But if someone said, "Kristen Bell is a b—-," I would probably have to go to the bathroom and wipe the tears away. That would kill me." —Kristen Bell, to Redbook in August 2013
"We have very strict rules in our family about how we treat people with respect, especially our family members. … We are going to be with each other in the long haul, so it's important to always be respectful and treat your sister the way you want to be treated… One thing I've learned as a mom is it's really important to monitor when they are able to receive your information. We wait until they calm down and then we talk to them." —Kristen Bell, to Us Weekly in May 2016
"My current alarm clock is the blood-curdling screams that I wake up to. I bolt down the hallway thinking that someone's fallen out of their crib or broken their arm or, I don't know, drowning in the sink, and then they're just like, 'Good morning, Mommy!'" —Kristen Bell, to Us Weekly in April 2017
"We're very focused on staying together. We've made a choice to love each other but realize relationships are a lot of work. I think it's responsible to be honest about that." —Kristen Bell, to Us Weekly in May 2016
"Once you find you've identified your mission statement, you can then simply put it into practice. I feel like I've identified the broad strokes of my mission statement here on the planet. It's not that I think I do everything correctly, but I know in my 20s, I didn't even have a mission statement or know who I was. That's not to say I don't have selfish moments — I do — but I also don't beat myself up because of those selfish moments if I'm at home and I need my husband to take the girls away from me because I need a breather. I don't say, 'I should be better.' I say, 'I'm doing great, [but] I just need a breather.'" —Kristen Bell, to Glamour in September 2016
"Women should own the fact that we are superheroes for the first however many months of your child's life. It is your opportunity and your duty to feed your baby should you choose to breastfeed and be proud of it." —Kristen Bell, to Babble in December 2016
"I am trying to teach my kids not be stunted by country lines, language barriers or religious boundaries. And that all human beings, and everyone in the world, is part of someone's family and they should be treated as such. It's so simple to get caught up in lines that divide us. Why are you different? I think it's important to remind ourselves that we are all the same and everyone is doing the best they can with what they have." —Kristen Bell, to E! News in June 2016
"I thought I had this life thing down pat when I met Dax. I didn't realize that I needed a much bigger toolbox to have confrontations and disagreements with people." —Kristen Bell, to Good Housekeeping in April 2015
"When I began putting on weight [during my pregnancy], I've got to be honest, it was a bummer. But then my hormones kicked in, and suddenly when I looked in the mirror, I saw Brooke Shields! I don't think I've felt sexier in my life. It was bizarre." —Kristen Bell, to Redbook in August 2013
"I hope it's coming across that we're being honest about our struggles because I don't want to do the damage that 'Say Anything' did to us. Where your perfect match is out there and he's going to be waiting outside with a boom box, and if only he'll show up… it's not on you to change the way you act to people. We want to be really clear that we go to therapy; we have learned how to fight. We disagree on almost every single topic on the planet. Except Netflix." —Kristen Bell, to Glamour in September 2016
On losing baby weight: "I refused to worry about something I could not change, and I still refuse. Look, I'm like any other woman. All this evolved B.S. that I'm telling you is my mantra: It's not something I practice naturally. I had to surrender to now worrying about the way I looked, how much I weighed, because that's just part of the journey of having a baby. I am not a woman whose self-worth comes from her dress size." —Kristen Bell, to Redbook in July 2013
"I don't deserve to be here. I worked hard, but I was also in the right place at the right time. And I'm really, really grateful for the jobs that I've had." —Kristen Bell, to CBS News in July 2016
"I have a wonderful support system. My sister helps me with the kids, I have a very involved husband, so I'm not doing it alone. It's funny, because sometimes when I'm exhausted at the end of the day, I think, 'Man, single mothers are superheroes.' They're superheroes. I could not imagine having to do all of this by myself. I have so much respect for single mothers." —Kristen Bell, to Pop Sugar in May 2016
"I think it's actually more fun to be secretly generous because if you go to a restaurant and you're like, 'I'm going to slip this person 200 bucks. I'm going to do it.' I don't want them to see because when I leave the restaurant, I feel giddy because I feel like a secret superhero. Try it… What's even cooler is when they don't know where it comes from." —Kristen Bell, to People in July 2016
"My husband and I tap out and take mini meditative breaks because we have two toddlers — they're so f—— loud — and we keep an eye on each other. We'll go 'Oh, okay you can take a break; I'll take over.' When you're in the ring, you gotta tap out with your partner. That's how we do it." —Kristen Bell, to Pop Sugar in June 2016
"Being a mom can be so isolating, and hanging out with other moms is very, very healthy." —Kristen Bell, to Pop Sugar in June 2016
