After I left college, I went to work at the Royal Opera House in London, which became a real catalyst for me because it made me realize that I was interested in cinema and in the way life is thrust at you. So I started making films.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Work Life Art

If you love someone, you love someone. It doesn't matter; age, colour, c'mon!

Love Age You

People in love don't see gender, colour or religion. Or age. It's about the other person, the one that you love and who loves you. You don't think of them in terms of a label. You just go with your heart.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Religion Love Art

The pictures I make come from every blink of my lashes.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Very T She

I'm motivated every second by my work; it doesn't switch off. The pictures I make come from every blink of my lashes.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Work Witch Wit

I believe that life is short, and there is too much time wasted bearing grudges, and I like to move on.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Time Life Wasted

I am completely, utterly obsessed with clothes. To an embarrassing extent.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Wit Utterly Utter

Never trust a hippie. That's definitely my motto.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Trust Us T

I almost never cry, and it's something I don't like about myself. I sometimes try and make myself cry. Sometimes, when I'm in pain, I say if I could just cry it would make it so much easier.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Time Would Us

When I had cancer, people were surprised at how cheerful and upbeat I was, but I couldn't let myself go to depression - to go there, that defeat would allow everything in. If you look too far into the abyss, you might never come out again. You can stand on the abyss and peep but not give in to sadness.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Sad You Would

I think, for me, Julian Schnabel set a great precedent in being able to cross over so successfully. I feel like his artwork is kind of big, grand, and bombastic, yet the films that he makes are very beautifully sensitive, and I just feel that his filmmaking sensibility is very different from his artwork.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Work Success Great

I have a massive phobia for schedules and calendars. I need people to tell me where I need to be. I can't bear to see it in black and white. I think it's a fear of being pinned down.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Fear White Where

Having children is exciting. Life puts the past into perspective.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Life Tin T

In my life, I've never really listened to when people start forming opinions on how you should be doing things.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Life Art You

I am just reflecting the times. I can't ignore them.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Time Us Tin

You think, 'You hired me because I'm a creative artist with a vision. Don't try and knock it out of me.'

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Art You Wit

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

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Car Won Tarot

When I was eight, a hippie guy taught me how to meditate and gave me this scarf I was supposed to wear when I meditated. I still have it; it's probably one of the items that mean most to me.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Car Wear Up

One of the few times I saw my mother cry was when Lennon died, and the other time was when Elvis died.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Time Times Tim

There's definitely something transformative about clothes.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Transformative Transform Thing

You have to be brave when you've got a kid.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

You T Kid

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.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I struggle if I have chaos around me, but at the same time, if I don't have it, I'm uncomfortable. It's a strange thing: If I don't have chaos, I create it.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Despite great advances in women's rights, statistics show that when it comes to the balance of power between the sexes, equality is far from being a global reality.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I was living with my stepfather for a while, and then I moved out and went and lived on my own in Hastings-by-the-Sea from about 16.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I only photograph myself at poignant moments in my life as a check of where I am and how large my thighs are.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I often joke that I straddle psychosis and neurosis, and that being an artist keeps me in the middle, so I can work between the two.

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.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I feel like I've lost 10 years of my life to cancer.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I don't understand why there aren't more powerful female directors. I don't have the answers, but I hope that things may start to shift and that studios will employ more women to handle strong and interesting material.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

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!

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I'm interested in taking raw human emotions and then isolating them without any narrative structure. In order to achieve this, I try to break out of the narrative conventions that you'd see in a typical feature film.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

The thing that is so great about Ang Lee is the diversity in his filmmaking, from 'Brokeback...' to 'The Hulk.'

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I find that I put my body in my work when I am at a particularly difficult or joyous point because I want to feel that moment.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

It would be nice to be a bit autonomous again, to enjoy something a bit quiet.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Seriously, I wanted to be an artist because I saw that it meant endless possibilities. I came from a badly managed family background, so art was a way of reinventing myself.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I can be very self-destructive, but quietly.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I suppose I didn't cry in all the cancer crap stuff because I felt I couldn't lose the battle, and part of the battle was holding myself together.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I love life. I think it's fantastic. Sometimes it deals hard things, and when it deals great things, you have to seize them.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

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

Sam Taylor-Johnson

My work is made on lines similar to those of a film production. A lot of my work is kind of bureaucratic, endlessly phoning up people, trying to find the cameraman and the lighting man, because I am a total technology-phobe, quite helpless with equipment.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

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 soul still inhabit the second floor.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

After I left college, I went to work at the Royal Opera House in London, which became a real catalyst for me because it made me realize that I was interested in cinema and in the way life is thrust at you. So I started making films.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Today is the tomorrow I worried about yesterday.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

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

Sam Taylor-Johnson

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

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I took on cancer like I take on everything - like a mission and a job to accomplish.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Sometimes, I get afraid it has defined me, that sense of grief, loss and illness. But actually, it is about allowing myself to take hold and say: 'This is part of who I am, but not only who I am.'

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I've made lots of big decisions in my life that have shocked people.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

My mum has lived in Australia for 22 years now, and we have a rocky relationship. But at the same time it's one I want to maintain. I need her to be my mum. The relationship took a lot of rebuilding.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Money scares me, and it always has done. I've got a childish concept of money, and I like to keep it that way in the sense that I don't like to think about it.

Sam Taylor-Johnson