Quotes

Sometimes people go, "Do you improvise a lot?" Well, you maybe improvise a lot beforehand to get to that point, but once I'm sure of what I want to do, that's it.

I've found that film-making's not just a job, it becomes part of your whole life.

Morvern Callar (2002)'s a really weird film, in a sense, where I was trying to experiment with taking things in a different direction, and it kind of half works and it half doesn't. And I kind of felt with that film that perhaps I should have pushed it more into the realms of black comedy, slightly.

Well, there was a lot of that kind of stuff from American agents, yeah. And through the years I've been sent scripts as well. But it's always all packaged and ready to go, and that just isn't me. Do you know what I mean?

...I get questions about what it's like to be a woman film-maker, and you don't get that question a lot if you're a man. I don't really go there because I can't really define what I bring to films as a woman.

The nature/nurture argument has been going on since the beginning of time. I think it would be crass of me to put some big stamp on it. That's the whole provocation of the film.

[on We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)] My first thought was maybe Tilda [Tilda Swinton] is too extraordinary. But then I thought 'Well, if you look like Tilda and you're stuck in this community, it's going to be really hard to hide yourself'.