Quotes from Nicolas Roeg

I like getting up early, but I haven't got a routine - mainly because I never have a clear idea of what day of the week it is.

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

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

We all have our beliefs or our agnosticism.

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.

My father was an extraordinary man.

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.

What makes God laugh is people who make plans.

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.

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

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

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

Marketing is such a key issue; in fact, the marketing department is often involved in the approval of scripts now.

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

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

I like the probability of the impossible.

Fear has many faces.

Any cuts that are done to any film, they're usually things that have some personal resonance for whoever has got permission to cut it and feels they should. But it has very little to do with the actual weight, the truth, of the piece.

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

In life, we all learn from everyone.

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

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