Sam Taylor-Johnson

“I can be a bit extreme. I'll spend too much time running round the park, doing yoga and drinking green tea. I can get a bit obsessive. I have to rein it in sometimes.”

“I wanted to become an artist because it meant endless possibilities. Art was a way of reinventing myself.”

“I understand what it is to go through emotional trauma and retreat and go into the world of your imagination. I understand how art and music can be a place of safety in a world of reinventio...”

“Seeing a new play in a first-time production is so exciting - when it's good, you want to shout from the rooftops.”

“Britain can sometimes feel like a very small village, and you're this, I dunno, scarlet woman they're all gossiping about.”

“I went to Goldsmith College of Art in London in the '80s and there I made sculptures, but the objects had nothing to do with how I was thinking. I was making beautifully sanded wooden boxes!”

“I can be very self-destructive, but quietly.”

“I'm the lightest sleeper. I can hear a pin drop. It's been worse since I was ill. I think your inner ear is always half open, listening out for the faintest danger sign.”

“Snobbery just inhibits you.”

“I'm interested in the acting and staging of specific emotions, and so I work with actors. It's a small proportion of what I do, but it's always what people seem to focus on.”

“I've been through plenty in my life where I've really had to focus on the day ahead... because, as I know, the future is, you know, whatever the future is... Once you've stared mortality tha...”

“To be feminist doesn't mean you can't be submissive.”

“My mother reads tarot cards, actually, but I won't let her read mine.”

“There are terrible things going on in the world, but I am not going to force them down everyone's throats.”

“Sorry, there's nothing like a screaming baby to make a mother twitch.”

“I'm annoying to be around because I keep twitching.”

“Shooting at Coco Chanel's apartment was an unexpectedly absorbing experience. The essence of Chanel is firmly rooted there in all of her possessions, and I truly believe that her spirit and...”