Nicolas Roeg Quotes

The rules are learnt in order to be broken, but if you don't know them, then something is missing.

You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.

Marketing is a very good thing, but it shouldn't control everything. It should be the tool, not that which dictates.

Years ago I had a house in Sussex, it was like Arcadia, with an old Victorian bridge, a pond and the Downs.

Too many films today feel formulaic and familiar. I prefer it when the familiar is made to feel strange.

When a book is just a plot, you know, two men fight for the love of a woman in a wild frontier, I immediately ask, 'Why?'

In marketing, the familiar is everything.

But in marketing, the familiar is everything, and that is controlled by the studio. That is reaching its apogee now.

Mirrors are the essence of movies.

What makes God laugh is people who make plans.

Any change in form produces a fear of change, and that has accelerated. Marketing is the death of invention, because marketing deals with the familiar.

Movies are not scripts - movies are films; they're not books, they're not the theatre.

Youth is so exciting. It'll take over. I don't want to be swept away. I want to be with the taking-over people, right to the end.

Oscars are won with two or three shots only, because if it's really beautifully photographed, you don't really notice it until the astounding moment emphasizes it.

They think something's gone wrong, but in Don't Look Now, for instance, one scene was made by a mistake. It's the scene where Donald Sutherland goes to look for the policeman who's investigating the two women.

Children's finger-painting came under the arts, but movies didn't.

The great difference between screen acting and theatre acting is that screen acting is about reacting - 75% of the time, great screen actors are great reactors.

In life, we all learn from everyone.

There was a village watercolour society and they'd come and paint in my field. I watched them from the window, the way they would struggle this way and that to find the perfect moment. God has made every angle on that beautiful, and I felt that tremendously.

Movies which set out to be 'commercial' usually have an artificial look about them-a certain waxlike quality. They allow for no failure, no moment of mistake.

We all have our beliefs or our agnosticism.

Some people are very lucky, and have the story in their heads. I've never storyboarded anything. I like the idea of chance. What makes God laugh is people who make plans.

We're all influenced by everything unless we're locked in an empty room.

I've always admired the tradition of storytellers who sat in the public market and told their stories to gathered crowds. They'd start with a single premise and talk for hours - the notion of one story, ever-changing but never-ending.

Movies are not scripts - movies are films; they're not books, they're not the theatre. It's a completely different discipline, it exists on its own. I would say that the beauty of it is it's not the theatre, it's not done over again. It's done in bits and pieces. Things are happening which you can't get again. I forbid anyone to say "Cut", the soundman, the operator, or whatever.

I've always thought there was something very marvelous and magical about mirrors, and that they are connected to memory as well.

In life, we all learn from everyone. But if you like and admire someone tremendously, perhaps because they think the way you do, or like the way you think, then inevitably you do.

I was very glad later when I was directing that I wasn't in the hands of a cinematographer and hoping that he would do it well. I would know what he was doing, and we could discuss how that scene would look.

I've always felt that, although Truffaut was greatly revered and admired, at the same time, in terms of film and how much he loved film, he was underestimated.

My father was an extraordinary man.