Jane Campion Quotes

If you read Keats’s poems, they’re often full of doubts and anxieties. They can be quite tough.

That’s just how I see things on a base level: there’s so much going on. Or at least I like to have that feeling. It’s part of being interested in notions of reality apart from storytelling. I don’t know if it has something to do with having an art school education, which makes you aware of the way visuals speak, or makes you trust them more.

Only when you are relaxed can you see what’s going on.

This is the first generation to grow up on Thatcher – it’s a different ethos. It’s money minded, and it’s the cult of yourself. Now that’s fine, except when it falls down, and you can’t achieve your goals – through high unemployment, through the fact that you probably need inherited money to get anywhere.

So many actors are not open in front of the camera – they have a persona.

You know, sex is actually not so original as the way people love or the stories behind each relationship, which is what you remember. Sex is sex in the end.

When I read Andrew Motion’s biography, I wept. It’s something about the purity of the story and how fresh it was because of the love letters Keats wrote.

I would love to see more women directors because they represent half of the population and gave birth to the whole world. Without them the rest [of the world] are not getting to know the whole story.

I had this spooky psychological thing about ‘The Piano’ before it began, which was how everybody was going to go nuts on the set. Because a film tends to set up the way people are going to behave.

I feel that directors at times are like the janitors on the set. I am the secretary, I am the organizer, I am the maid, and I ask if they have eaten or rested. The best things are always out of your control. It’s those moments that surpass the imagination that are thrilling.

Because there is that sort of feeling that people don’t know what to do with gaps in their lives. It’s a scary notion, but actually, if you can stand in space just for a little while, a new door will open, or you’ll be able to see in the dark after a while. You’ll adjust.

It’s a luxury to be able to tell a long form story. I love novels, and I love to have a long relationship with characters.