Lena Andersson Quotes

I think most writers feel like they're on the outside looking in much of the time. All of us feel, to a certain extent, alienated from the stuff going on around us.

Creating fantasy is a very personal thing, but you can't take the process too personally.

I am not a librarian of my own work. It's a good thing not to be too involved with what you have done.

What you cut out becomes part of the story you tell.

I think it's true that, as is often observed, the writer is always an outsider. A writer is someone who is telling stories about what's going on, which is something you can't do if you're totally caught up in the moment.

Don't get seduced by your own stuff. Don't get high on your own supply. The hardest thing as a filmmaker is when you're watching a film that you've worked on for several years. You know every frame so intimately that holding lots of the objectivity of a new viewer who has just seen it for the first time is the hardest thing. Every aesthetic decision you make - and you make thousands of them every day, have to - in theory, must be done from you being a blank slate. You almost have to run a program, like a mind wipe, every time you watch the movie.

I can't concern myself with how viewers feel.

I do know that detachment is important. A surgeon can't be weeping into the open wound.

In a strange way, you have to have a certain amount of distance from a thing in order to be able to write about it.

When I'm a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It's somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

When I see a film I've finished, it's like another person made it. Like another mind.

You could say that when you introduce humour to your work, you also step back a little from it. You create a distance.

The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.

You know, if one paints someone's portrait, one should not know him if possible.

I don't see my movies. I think it's healthier and safer to keep a bit of distance. I'm afraid to be disappointed.

Any time you write history, you insert your opinion. You pick and choose what you are going to write about. I feel really happy not inserting myself. I spend too much of my life inserting myself. It's just great to let other people carry the narrative.

As for ABC you can't take it personally. We had three good years.

The work is the work. The work is not me.

I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.

I never take anything personally when it doesn't concern me.

In this business, you can't get too attached to something.

You can't identify 100% with your character.

I think my narrative is actually pretty interesting if I step back from it and don't engage too much in it, personally or emotionally.

I admire writers who can remain objective and distanced, but that doesn't seem to be in my toolbox somehow. I have to care, I have to have skin in the game.

I always felt a little bit on the outside.