Nicolas Roeg Quotes

When you admire someone's work, you are amazed by who you think they are.

I love that perhaps we don't see the things that are there because we have no yardstick to see things by, to compare them.

Film can be more of a reality than a page with words can ever be.

Grief is an emotion that's almost unplayable because you're in a separate emotional state; it's an inconsolable emotion.

I generally try to avoid talking about my old films - I find it difficult.

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.

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.

You can't hide in life. We are all being watched by some larger vision.

I wouldn't like to be a non-believer in anything.

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.

I came up the old-fashioned way - tea boy, cutter, focus-puller, cinematographer - but I wasn't myself old-fashioned.

Nature repeats itself, but it never starts from the beginning.

Fear has many faces.

I've used mirrors in a lot of movies. I think the mirror is an extraordinary thing, also the reflective, a reflection in water, etc.

I realized I've spent all my life creating a past.

Don't you think it's something strange that you rarely look at yourself in the mirror, except to do things like stand and ponder? I mean, in Shakespeare's day, it was thought that the mirror would reveal something, that it is trying to tell you something - not just to tidy your hair, but something more.

And later I thought, I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography.

There's no one 'right' way of making a science fiction movie; there's no one way of making any kind of movie, really!

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.

I imagine if aliens came down to Earth, they'd actually be quite tall; people seem to get everything right about extraterrestrials but the size!

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

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.

I've always loved the future. But I must say the future changes a lot quicker than it used to. An era used to last thirty or forty years - now we're lucky if it's five.

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

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

In marketing, the familiar is everything.

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.

A lot of my movies have come to be thought about only years after the fact, and I'm sad about that but also happy about it in a way, as it's given them longevity.

I like women in film. I like women in general, but I especially like to show them on film. They are not ciphers.

I've always noticed that films set in any sort of future very rarely draw on the present.

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.

I don't look back on any film I've done with fondness or pride.

I think I've never really liked the idea of genre, a film that follows the rules of a genre.

In life, we all learn from everyone.

Film remains completely mystical and mysterious to me.

I've been told my movies are difficult to market.

Critics reach that age when it is as valuable and daring to hold a negative opinion as it is for a positive. We learn and understand from both.

When I look around, I begin to understand what Socrates meant when he said, 'How much there is in the world I do not want.'

We all have our beliefs or our agnosticism.

I was always a bit arty-farty as a boy. 'Come on, Mr. Arty-Farty,' my sister used to say to me.

I made a film called 'Bad Timing' that I thought everybody would respond to. It was about obsessive love and physical obsession. I thought this must touch everyone, from university dons down.

Oh, some of my films have been attacked with absolute vitriol!

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

I've never tried to enhance my reputation. Never moved upwards from one thing to another. That sort of thing is of no interest to me at all.

Our lives are full of all the genres. Fear and hope and sadness.

We can't get our youth back.

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.

Men and women's needs and desires overlap but go in different directions as well.

My father was an extraordinary man.

Our memory and the movies keep movie stars alive for us, and Tony Curtis is still a star.

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.