JENNIFER LYNCH

I still fall asleep with the TV on, because I'm used to falling asleep with people yelling 'Action!' and 'Cut!'

I don't think if you asked any of my childhood friends they would say that I had a weird childhood; they might say there weren't a lot of regular rules, the conversations in the house were always very open, dreams were a great thing to talk about, everybody was making something all the time.

I really believe that if you're going to bring a child into the world, it's your job to parent that world. Especially if it's just you; you don't pawn her off on somebody.

Trust yourself so that the mistakes you make are the ones you've made and not something you've made because you were afraid to do what you wanted to do. Own your mistakes, then you can own your successes.

Pressure is an emotional paralysis. It's hard enough to do the dishes when you're feeling pressured, let alone make a movie.

The closer you are to people, the more you realise what has happened to them.

My life is perfectly happy and giggly and I'm perfectly grateful every day; if there are problems to have, the ones I have are the ones to have; I'm lucky.

When you love something, it never goes away.

For me, I was given a great gift by my father and my mother in that I was never told any idea was bad. I was told I could explore any thought as long as I wasn't hurting someone else.

I am more comfortable on set than I am in my own home.

I'm a huge fan of Akira Kurosawa, a big Hitchcock fan.

The planet is always half light and half dark, and so are we.

I love how a story can help someone discuss something they otherwise would not.

I may not be wealthy; I'm living from pay check to pay check, but I get to make movies, which is what I love to do.

Some people are just not going to like me and they're not going to like my work. But that doesn't mean I'm a bad person.

For me, one of the most important things I look for in an actor is whether we can converse. Do we have a similar ability to discuss a character?

The first time I saw 'Sunset Boulevard' I was probably eight or nine years old, and it really struck me how it's so simply put and elegant, yet there's so much going on.

I want to investigate what scares me and worries me.

Try to be as good a listener as you are a speaker. Don't just put the emphasis on saying things. Listen.

When you finish some film and you let it out there, it is completely out of your control. You've done what you've done, you haven't done what you haven't done, and now you are up for judgment. People can be all kinds of ruthless and they can be all kinds of wonderful. The joy in what I do is in the doing of it. And then there is the part where people are either going to see what I've offered and liked it or they are going to see what I've offered and wish they hadn't.

I have gone insane. I won't be talking with you for a while.

Writing was my companion and stories were my companion when I was bedridden and didn't think I was going to walk again and all of that treacherous stuff. And stories are how you can comfort a child. It's certainly how I comforted my daughter, in good and bad times.

I think that laughter is very close to terror and horror. Maybe that's just me, but that sort of all - over rush that happens when you are either laughing or terrified or weeping...? I think that comedians, in and of themselves, make other people laugh because they aren't necessarily the happiest people in the world. So they know a lot about dark things.

The way that we tend to think about privacy is not that you have to keep everything secret, it's not that you can't share anything with other people - it's that you have control over the dissemination of the information about you.

My father is so jolly, and I live a really happy life. I think that's why all my interest in the darker things in films comes up: because I'm curious about things I don't live in.