Quotes from Ridley Scott

I'm a very practical person.

Far from being dead, physical media has years of life left and must be preserved because there is no better alternative.

There are some moments that are pretty distressing in 'Prometheus.' In fact, the last hour is pretty distressing.

When you're watching a documentary, the danger is to romanticize.

It's everything and I always make decisions about the cast.

I come out of TV. I come out of live television, BBC drama: that's where I started first as a designer, then a director. Then I went independent TV, then television advertising.

I love designing, and I still do it.

I think, at the end of the day, filmmaking is a team, but eventually there's got to be a captain.

I knew exactly what to do on Alien, it was funny.

And anyway, it's only movies. to stop me I think they'll ahve to shoot me in the head.

Politics is very interesting and always leads to conflict.

I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.

Blade Runner appears regularly, two or three times a year in various shapes and forms of science fiction. It set the pace for what is essentially urban science fiction, urban future and it's why I've never re-visited that area because I feel I've done it.

Do what you haven't done is the key, I think.

I was always amazed about how much I could finally squeeze into a thirty second commercial.

I think movies are getting dumber, actually. Where it used to be 50/50, now it`s 3% good, 97% stupid.

Is it terrible to not understand a thing, if it's beautiful?

Some Neanderthal had the magical idea of blowing through a reed ... to entertain the children one night in a cave somewhere. Then, in a blink of an eye ... civilization.

It doesn't matter how much faith you have or don't have [in aliens]. I just don't buy the idea that we're alone. There's got to be some form of life out there.

Your landscape in a western is one of the most important characters the film has. The best westerns are about man against his own landscape.

Sci-fi films are as dead as westerns.

I had a quite unconventional childhood, in the sense that I traveled a lot and I went to 10 or 11 schools. I was completely confused academically, but wherever I went, I could paint. I painted an inordinate amount.

By going to a preview, a director becomes insidiously infected by the process, so by the end of it, you're thinking, 'It may be a bit too long.'

I try to make films, not movies. I've never liked the expression 'movie', but it sounds elitist to say that.