NICOLAS ROEG

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

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

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.

Tony Curtis was a joy to work with. He had a curious innocence that is very young and wise at the same time.

In life, we all learn from everyone.

We can't get our youth back.

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.

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.

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.

I like the probability of the impossible.

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'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.

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.

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

My father was an extraordinary man.

I think the big studios shaped and formed the artists that they put under contract.

People are mistaken to view cinema as some sort of gimmick. It's very much ingrained in the ways in which we understand each other.

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

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.

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.

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

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.'

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