Top 103 Quotes & Sayings by Lynne Ramsay

I don't really watch TV; YouTube is far more entertaining. But I have tuned in to 'X Factor' - I like trash and nature programmes.

To be honest, I was on the verge of thinking I didn't even want to be a film-maker, just because making 'Ratcatcher' had been so tough. Afterwards, I was just ill. Knackered.

I've got a reputation for being difficult, and yet with my crew and my cast, I'm super-collaborative and we get on really well, and they like working with me.

I don't want to become a director for hire.

It interests me when I hear people quoting great thinkers, because it's like, OK, but does that make you any brighter?

I grew up on film noir.

Quite often you get a lot of films with lots of story but no characterisation.

Where you're running out of time, you have these brainwave moments. It's allowing the space to have them, even in an incredibly tight situation.

Every director has a labour-of-love project.

Straight talking and going on your instincts was important when I grew up. And being funny.

It's funny - sometimes when you approach people they get freaked out but occasionally you'll find a gem who's unselfconscious in front of the camera.

There's something called toxic stress, which is repeated exposure to trauma. I was fascinated by how it affects the brain and the development of a person.

If you feel you have made a great piece of work, which the script for 'The Lovely Bones' was, and that it suddenly means nothing, it's like being in the land of the lost. You don't know what's good or bad and what anything means.

I think audiences are quite sophisticated.

Getting finance together can take a while.

Whatever we take from a film - personal, public, private, subconscious - a list can only contain moments that are often a key to the recognition of something more complex.

On a film shoot, a crew will know instantly when they are dealing with someone who knows the technical stuff and they respond accordingly. It's often about getting their respect from the off.

You know, I grew up in a place where people appreciate it when you're very direct.

My brother and my mother had a really difficult relationship; he would exasperate her to death but she'd always be there for him, she always loved him even if she didn't like him at the moment.

I suppose every filmmaker, at least the filmmakers I really like, are amateur psychologists to a degree. Or they come from a psychological approach, I guess.

Ultimately, you're happiest in yourself when you make your best work.

I'm interested in genre in a way, I suppose because you have a framework of something and you can just twist it to explore the psychology or try different subversive ideas on something that feels familiar.

To me violence, once you've done one violent act it leads to another, it leads to another, it leads to another, it becomes routine.

I think you can say so much about a character in lots of subtle ways.

Morvern Callar'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.

Cinema is a great medium for creating a dream world and entering into it.

I don't need to own one but I like to look at Diane Arbus's pictures and anything by Jackson Pollock.

There's something fascinating about record collector minds, hoards of quotes shared and dealt like cards, lines traded, images bought.

When I go to the cinema, I want to have a cinematic experience. Some people ignore the sound and you end up seeing something you might see on television and it doesn't explore the form.

My mum says I was the best kid ever; you could put me in a corner with a box of paints and I'd be happy for hours. They'd say, 'Lynne, Lynne,' and I wouldn't hear them.

I find it difficult to write with reference to the most memorable moments in film, when for me the best moments in films are truly irreducible.

I can't lose sleep over people who need every last thing spelled out for them.

Where I find things tough is when things are hidden, and people don't say what they mean.

I was at the National Film School and was a cinematographer there. I got quite a lot of experience on documentary film-making and with directors who were interesting - maybe they weren't using scripts or were using non-actors.

At the time I left film school there wasn't a lot of hope for young film-makers. It was a calling card of film school to be quite slick and commercial, which might lead to getting some stuff on telly.

Families are so complicated.

My mother told me to stay away from boys, but that didn't work out.

My brother gave my mother a lot of trouble.

They thought I was deaf when I was a kid because I was always totally off in my own little world.

I have twins and luckily when I first looked at them I felt, I am really into you. I am going to find it easy to love you. But there are mothers out there who do not make that connection. It is a taboo subject but it is not exotic. It is a nightmare.

There is so much media and social media.

I want an audience.

Maybe I should be a literary agent. I'm good at picking up on books that become successful before it happens. I could pick up a lot more money than making films.

I remember with 'Ratcatcher,' in the script it was beautiful blue skies and sunny every day, but it rained constantly. You have to go with what the film is going to be.

With dialogue, people say a lot of things they don't mean. I like dialogue when it's used in a way when the body language says the complete opposite. But I love great dialogue... I think expositional dialogue is quite crass and not like real life.

When I walk into a cinema, I want to leave with an experience unrepeatable, unquotable and indescribable.

I love to see great dialogue in the cinema but I hate to see 'Film TV.'

It was quite a macho world I grew up in, but it was always cheeky and funny, and the women were the ones in the background that were really in control.

You know when people ask sometimes what are you doing, and you say just something to them.

Well, the film industry is completely sexist and completely class-biased. It's not something I get on the ground level, it's more from financiers and producers and distributors. It's a way of dealing with you that is essentially patronising: I know better than you.

I'm attracted to challenging subject matter.

You have to keep going or this industry will roll over you and leave you for dead.

I think 'Ratcatcher' broke even as a film, but it got a good critical response. I think that people knew that it wasn't going to be a conventional piece of work, but they were still willing to invest in it. With this material you have to be quite courageous.

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

I hate being safe. There's a lot of easy rides and boring films out there, but I've stuck to my guns. It's not an easy path.

I hate exposition and superfluous dialogue. I hate when dialogue is trying to explain or patronize or finger-point.

I don't make films for everybody; if I did that it would be blandness beyond belief.

I love movies like 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' that are based on short novellas.

I'd get people asking me about my terrible, poor childhood which, in fact, was very normal, and I'd think, would you be as interested in me if I'd grown up in Surrey? And it surprised me how much I resented that.

Writing's so hard.