Andrea Arnold Quotes

When your characters are really living they tell you what they do.

I work best when there is adversity: I seem to get calmer the more the fur is flying.

I always think that if you look at anyone in detail, you will have empathy for them because you recognize them as a human being, no matter what they've done.

I wonder whether my bleak-o-meter is set differently from other people's. I have such passion for what I do that I can't see it as bleak. When people use that word, or “grim” or “gritty,” I just think, “Oh, come on, look a bit deeper.” My films don't give you an easy ride. I can see that. The sense I get is that people have quite a physical experience with them. They feel afterwards that they've really been through something.

I can't remember why or how I started writing, but I think it was always a way of making sense of the world.

When I was in New York I heard many people saying that the independent film industry was in big trouble. I was reflecting on this when I came home. Realizing that ever since I started filmmaking, people have being saying that. But somehow it keeps going. Filmmakers keep going. We need stories to make sense of the world and some people like me are driven to tell them. I have faith this will always be possible.

I think the reality is important anyway.

I'm never going back to the past. It is like when I am driving - I never like to do those routes that take you backwards and make you go the long way. I always like to do the shortcuts and go forward.

Dramatically, I like darkness, I like conflict - but I don't see the world as defined by them.

Whenever I get fed up with life I love to go wandering in nature.

I hear filmmakers saying, 'I wanted to make to make a film about this issue, or this theme,' but I never start like that.

For me, making films is about trying to work something out by myself in quite a lonely way. I find the whole thing very lonely really.

Every time I start a film I feel like I'm starting the first time, ever.

Interestingly, I never thought Id do an adaptation. Ive also been quite against them. I think trying to translate one medium to another is wrong. I never really felt that books fitted into film. Generally people are disappointed, arent they?

I grew up with a lot of Hollywood films. Cozy farm houses, cowboys, nice flats in New York. Especially as a kid, those things have a huge impression on you.

I find it kind of weird that directors want to put themselves in their films.

I was never that comfortable in front of the camera, it always terrified me.

I deliberately never read about films before I see them.

I always get quite close to my script because I work quite hard on them.

I don't feel very revengeful in life at all.

I do believe some people can naturally act and don't know it.

I am obsessed with why people turn out the way they are.

America is a huge country, of course. It's complicated. There's good, and there's not so good, and that's the same wherever you live.

Sleep your way to the top.

I've always loved America.