Sam Taylor-Johnson Quotes

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Profession : Director

Birth : March 4, 1967

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

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

When you're no longer ill, and everyone's gotten over the fact that you've had cancer, that core of steel doesn't go away, and then I had to find other channels for it.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Relationships can go wrong very simply, very quickly, and when you have children you become more aware of relationships around you.

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

I feel the art world in New York has a stronger following than Britain. If you go to a New York art district on a Saturday morning, it will be so busy with families and openings - art is much more ingrained in the culture.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I felt giving birth was the most creative act of all my creative acts - literally creation!

Sam Taylor-Johnson

My childhood had its challenges, like everyone's. It imbued me with certain things and took away others. It made me very determined.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

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

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I never thought of having cancer as something that was unfair. I just braced myself and tried to get through it.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

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

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I always say, and I truly believe this, that my work is three steps ahead of me. I have an idea for something and I tend to feel like it's leading me and I'll follow the process through, and it's not until after I've seen it that I truly understand why I'm doing this.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I think people are frightened of women making big decisions.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I've always lived my life fearlessly, and what I want to do with my life, I do.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

I think you only see experiences as defining moments with distance.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

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 reinvention.

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

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

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