Top 25 Jane Campion Quotes

I think if it’s interesting, it’s interesting, and if it’s not, it’s not working.

Women today are dealing with both their independence and also the fact that their lives are built around finding and satisfying the romantic models we grew up with.

I did this Super-8 film at art school called ‘Tissues,’ this black comedy about a family whose father has been arrested for child molestation. I was absolutely thrilled by every inch of it, and would throw my projector in the back of my car and show it to anybody who would watch it.

I think that three-act fundamentalism in film culture is a problem sometimes, because it’s almost too obvious, or it’s too expected. And it’s not the only way to fill two hours, or to phrase things, or to order thoughts, or order ideas.

I have to admit that I had a lot of problems with poetry.

I think that the romantic impulse is in all of us and that sometimes we live it for a short time, but it’s not part of a sensible way of living. It’s a heroic path and it generally ends dangerously.

My musical knowledge is so bad it’s embarrassing. When composers discuss music with someone as primitive as myself, they have to talk about it in terms of senses and emotion, rather than keys and tempo.

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.

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.

I’m a much better filmmaker than painter. But studying it did make me visually acute and taught me lessons like being economic: Say something once and you don’t have to say it again.

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.

What I have learned from my work up to now, is to try to be open, but also protect myself by not letting the good and the evil get too much importance.

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.

I can get very philosophical and ask the questions Keats was asking as a young guy. What are we here for? What’s a soul? What’s it all about? What is thinking about, imagination?

I think the whole tension about romanticism is the way it builds and builds, and the moment it’s consummated, the tension’s over.

‘The Piano Lesson’ is very sophisticated, easily the most adult or complex material I’ve attempted. It’s the first film I’ve written that has a proper story, and it was a big struggle for me to write. It meant I had to admit the power of narrative.

There are some things that are real, that you can see, that you can observe, like the moon, and grass and things. But for ideas to become real, they have to be played on your senses.

For me, being a director is about watching, not about telling people what to do. Or maybe it’s like being a mirror; if they didn’t have me to look at, they wouldn’t be able to put the make-up on.

I had a daughter who was 9 years old and I had the feeling I wasn’t going to be a real parent if I didn’t quit making movies for a while and spend time with her. I also felt that I’d made enough movies and said what I had to say at the time.

I seem to have been able to make a career out of doing what I feel like doing, so why not keep doing it? What’s corrupting is wanting to be more important. You want to be more arty – you get your identity from that. Or you get your identity out of making more money.

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

To deny women directors, as I suspect is happening in the States, is to deny the feminine vision.

I didn’t like England. I couldn’t take the look of the place or the style of friendship. I need more intimacy from people than is considered okay there, and I felt that my personality and my enthusiasms weren’t understood. I had to put a big lid on myself.

I love it when actors come to you with a problem and you have to listen. You’d like them to just get on with it, but it often means that there’s a problem with the script.

Eight years ago, I was drawn into Keats’s world by Andrew Motion’s biography. Soon I was reading back and forth between Keats’s letters and his poems. The letters were fresh, intimate and irreverent, as though he were present and speaking. The Keats spell went very deep for me.