Julia Leigh quotes:

I think it's restrictive to typecast myself as a novelist because I enjoy other forms of expression. I love literature and I love cinema.

I've never forgotten what it's like to be in your early twenties, which is not a particularly easy time. You've left your family, you've left the strictures of high school, and you're trying to break free and form yourself but you have to support yourself as well. We don't really give enough credence to that time of life and to its troubles.

The most important thing is to have something important to say and finding the means to say it.

I think striking the right tone for your story is, if you like, the alchemical work of writing.

It's dangerous to think too much about how a film will be received. Filmmaking is not a popularity contest. Some would disagree.

I love films where you go into the cinema and loosen the edges of yourself and you hopefully enter into the world of the film. You're watching something unfold before you. I prefer the idea of wonder or intense wonder over shock or something.

The great thing about being a writer is that you have a long, perhaps frighteningly long time in which to do your work.

I, myself, don't like to see a film on Friday night and then forget it by the next day.

To me, the question of inspiration is an exercise in hindsight. The truth is, inspiration is mysterious at the time. I don't think it's ever a rational process.

I always find it extremely hard to remember the act of beginning. I almost deliberately forget it.

One of the most ephemeral and important things is atmosphere and tone and it's very hard to put your finger on what creates that.

The point is the 'me' that you see before you is not the 'me' in my private little space, shape-shifting into the writing role, nor is it the 'me' that works with the actors. Here, at the end of the film doing interviews, I feel like I'm in disguise.

The concentration of the elite athlete is akin perhaps to the concentration of the writer.

We stitch together our days and edit out our nights.

There is a difference between a voyeur and a tender witness. Maybe I think the audience is more of a tender witness than a voyeur, which has a shady undertone.

Although filmmaking is collaborative and involves trust, ultimately it is the director who holds the whole picture together in their head.

I think every single person perceives things differently. We are all singular.

I'm trying to get under people's skin in a way. I don't like films that go in one ear and out the other.

I don't think good films have messages.

I do believe we're all adaptable, and you're probably more adaptable than you realize.