Quotes from Joe Wright

Most of my choices come about through some kind of intuition or instinct, and if I need to, I'll post-rationalize them, intellectually, afterwards. But generally, they come about just by feeling.

I find it ironic that happy endings now are called fairytale endings because there's nothing happy about most fairytale endings.

I'm very interested in dance, and I'm very interested in how people express themselves through movement. And of course, cinema is a kinetic art form. It's almost the point of cinema - it's time-based and movement-based.

I like the idea of doing something outside my comfort zone.

Film has become a very passive experience, but with theatre, there is a contract made with the audience, where they participate. That's why my parents' puppet theatre was such a special place - people used their imaginations. It's a muscle that needs using.

When I left college, I though that I would be immediately embraced by the film world and instead found myself sitting in a squat for three years not knowing what to do with my life.

I find men odd. I don't really understand men. I kind of feel like I understand women better than I do men, really.

I worked hard, but I was lucky the right people happened to see my work.

I wouldn't presume to know something, but I have lots to learn and that's what I attempt to do through my work.

3D doesn't work quite so well with quick cuts and I probably would have done some longer takes had I really taken that information onboard.

I don't make a division between an art film and commercial art.

'Blue Velvet' changed my life forever. It was like I'd always read Chaucer and suddenly discovered Charles Bukowski. It made me understand that there is poetry of sublime ecstasy and dark terror, and it spoke to a side of me that hadn't been reached before.

Studios are often very nervous of things they don't recognize, by which I mean things that haven't been done before, and therefore, they take a really original idea, and they recognize the originality, and then they try and make it look like something they recognize. So they try to turn it into something far more procedural.

I couldn't be a cameraman or a designer or an actor - I have to be a director because I learned how to do that from my dad.

I'm interested in people with very exceptional world views or realities.

That luxury, ossified Los Angeles world isn't good for the soul.