Sam Taylor-Johnson

“Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the greatest actors of our age; he's like Olivier. He's one of those people who can take you into a place where no one else can take you.”

“My mum has always been quite free-spirited, and she has taught me a lot. I think that is probably why I have the sort of mind that I do.”

“Just because you've faced your own mortality, it doesn't make it any less frightening.”

“It was so amazing to fall crazily in love and get married and have kids.”

“I'm very blessed with the perfect husband.”

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

“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.”

“Seeing a new play in a first-time production is so exciting - when it's good, you want to shout from the rooftops.”

“I went out of my way to try not to be an artist, because I thought I would end up leading a miserable, obscure life. I tried to escape it for as long as I could, until I had to admit at 25 that that was my path.”

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

“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.”

“I am just reflecting the times. I can't ignore them.”

“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.”

“If you have the ideas, and you're a creative person, then you don't really differentiate in how your ideas manifest themselves.”

“I remember as a kid not ever wanting to have friends around to my house because it was, for want of a better description, disheveled.”

“I love showing my scar on my tummy - it is shaped like a question mark.”

“Sometimes, I get afraid it has defined me, that sense of grief, loss and illness. But actually, it is about allowing myself to take hold and say: 'This is part of who I am, but not only who I am.'”

“I am completely, utterly obsessed with clothes. To an embarrassing extent.”

“The pictures I make come from every blink of my lashes.”

“Tea is a huge part of my life.”