Andrea Arnold Quotes

I've not used a score in any of my films so far.

I'm fascinated with what an audience will take away from an image.

I don't want to think too much about me.

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.

People ask, 'Are your things autobiographical?,' and I think, no, they're not autobiographical directly, but of course my life has informed my work.

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

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

I want to try and be instinctive as a writer and director.

Obviously when you cast someone who hasn't acted before it can be a massive opportunity for them.

Interestingly, I never thought I'd do an adaptation. I've 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, aren't they?

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 try and be truthful.

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

I normally go with the flow.

I deliberately never read about films before I see them.

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

Once I've finished a film I just want to get on and make another one.

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.

Films are all about decisions, and that's what I love.

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

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

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

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

I'm sure most of us remember being a kid and you have all of this endless time where two weeks before Christmas feels like ten years. I used to go to bed to try and go to sleep to try and make it go faster.

I grew up in a working-class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know.

Sleep your way to the top.

As long as you keep your budgets small, there's a way of making films.

We're all quite vulnerable human beings really.

With a lot of films, people are sitting on the outside looking in, but I want the audience to get a bit more intimately involved with what's going on, so that they maybe can experience it a little bit more intensely.

I just like doing things from my own head.

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

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

I was 18 when I got my first TV job.

I was a freestyle dancer; I wasn't trained.