Quotes by Nicolas Roeg

• 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.
• 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.
• You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.
• Years ago I had a house in Sussex, it was like Arcadia, with an old Victorian bridge, a pond and the Downs.
• 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.
• But in marketing, the familiar is everything, and that is controlled by the studio. That is reaching its apogee now.
• 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.
• The rules are learnt in order to be broken, but if you don't know them, then something is missing.
• Children's finger-painting came under the arts, but movies didn't.
• Fear has many faces.
• In life, we all learn from everyone.
• Marketing is a very good thing, but it shouldn't control everything. It should be the tool, not that which dictates.
• 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.
• 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.
• Movies are not scripts - movies are films; they're not books, they're not the theatre.
• And later I thought, I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography.