I almost never cry, and it’s something I don’t like about myself. I sometimes try and make myself cry. Sometimes, when I’m in pain, I say if I could just cry it would make it so much easier. – Sam Taylor-Wood
I went to Goldsmith College of Art in London in the ’80s and there I made sculptures, but the objects had nothing to do with how I was thinking. I was making beautifully sanded wooden boxes! – Sam Taylor-Wood
I’m motivated every second by my work; it doesn’t switch off. The pictures I make come from every blink of my lashes. – Sam Taylor-Wood
I feel the art world in New York has a stronger following than Britain. If you go to a New York art district on a Saturday morning, it will be so busy with families and openings – art is much more ingrained in the culture. – Sam Taylor-Wood
I love karaoke. I love maudlin country ballads. In another life, I’d be Loretta Lynn. – Sam Taylor-Wood
I think that, to be an artist, you have to have a big enough ego to believe that people out in the world want to see what you think is a good idea. And if you don’t have that sense of ego, then the minute that idea goes into the world, self-doubt kicks in. – Sam Taylor-Wood
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. – Sam Taylor-Wood
I have a massive phobia for schedules and calendars. I need people to tell me where I need to be. I can’t bear to see it in black and white. I think it’s a fear of being pinned down. – Sam Taylor-Wood
I felt giving birth was the most creative act of all my creative acts – literally creation! – Sam Taylor-Wood
I’m the lightest sleeper. I can hear a pin drop. It’s been worse since I was ill. I think your inner ear is always half open, listening out for the faintest danger sign. – Sam Taylor-Wood
I understand what it is to go through emotional trauma and retreat and go into the world of your imagination. I understand how art and music can be a place of safety in a world of reinvention. – Sam Taylor-Wood
My childhood had its challenges, like everyone’s. It imbued me with certain things and took away others. It made me very determined. – Sam Taylor-Wood
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. – Sam Taylor-Wood
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. – Sam Taylor-Wood
I often joke that I straddle psychosis and neurosis, and that being an artist keeps me in the middle, so I can work between the two. – Sam Taylor-Wood
I feel lucky to be getting older. The fact that I made it to 30 and then 40 was big enough. So I can’t get too down on getting older; otherwise, it kind of undoes everything I’ve fought for. – Sam Taylor-Wood
Relationships can go wrong very simply, very quickly, and when you have children you become more aware of relationships around you. – Sam Taylor-Wood
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.’ – Sam Taylor-Wood
When I had cancer – of the colon first, followed by breast cancer and a mastectomy – my motto used to be ‘Drips by day, Prada by night.’ I felt that I had to grasp it in the same way as you’d take on any challenge. – Sam Taylor-Wood
After I left college, I went to work at the Royal Opera House in London, which became a real catalyst for me because it made me realize that I was interested in cinema and in the way life is thrust at you. So I started making films. – Sam Taylor-Wood
Seriously, I wanted to be an artist because I saw that it meant endless possibilities. I came from a badly managed family background, so art was a way of reinventing myself. – Sam Taylor-Wood
I wanted to become an artist because it meant endless possibilities. Art was a way of reinventing myself. – Sam Taylor-Wood
I love life. I think it’s fantastic. Sometimes it deals hard things, and when it deals great things, you have to seize them. – Sam Taylor-Wood
My work is made on lines similar to those of a film production. A lot of my work is kind of bureaucratic, endlessly phoning up people, trying to find the cameraman and the lighting man, because I am a total technology-phobe, quite helpless with equipment. – Sam Taylor-Wood
