Quotes from Lynne Ramsay

If you want to achieve a real labour of love, it can be painful, too.

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.

To me, most filmmaking is a kind of visualization of how people are. The dark, the light, the absurdity of life, all the crazy things, you know? So all of the characters that I've made have been really close to my heart. I guess what I'm interested in is just visualizing a really three-dimensional picture of a person.

I came from a background of photography so I look at details and visuals, and I see things in pictures or signs.

Short stories can make for really good adaptations.

Just being in love with making films makes me carry on.

Films I've really liked are when you've walked out and you're still in that movie for a while. That's virtual reality for me, to go into a theatre, especially with the use of sound - a subconscious thing that's underestimated. I remember seeing 'Blue Velvet' when I was 15, and half the audience walking out, but I thought my life had changed.

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.

In my short film, 'Gasman,' I shot it at a kid's party. And the kids were just having a party - they couldn't care less about our film. But that was great because we got this amazing footage where kids were drinking soda and pop or whatever, and getting that sugar high and beating each other up or dancing.

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.

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

You can always tell a great photographer because they make you feel super-relaxed.

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.

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.

It's surreal, Glasgow. It's got a really black sense of humor and I remember being envious of John Glazer beating me to it on the sci-fi in Glasgow with 'Under the Skin.'

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

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.

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

I've had some bad experiences, but I've also been lucky and I just feel so privileged to be able to even make films.

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.

You've got to stick up for what you believe in. If you don't do that, you're doing a disservice to the audience, because you're making something really diluted. And if you do that when you're a guy, you're seen as artistic - 'difficulty' is seen as a sign of genius. But it's not the same for women.

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.

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.

Getting finance together can take a while.