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.
— Nicolas Roeg
I think I've never really liked the idea of genre, a film that follows the rules of a genre.
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.
I like women in film. I like women in general, but I especially like to show them on film. They are not ciphers.
Nature repeats itself, but it never starts from the beginning.
Tony Curtis was a joy to work with. He had a curious innocence that is very young and wise at the same time.
Men and women's needs and desires overlap but go in different directions as well.
Mirrors are the essence of movies.
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'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.
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.
I've always noticed that films set in any sort of future very rarely draw on the present.
'Eureka' was very bad timing. The early 1980s: Reagan and Thatcher were in, greed was good, and here was a film about the richest man in the world who still couldn't be happy. Politically and sociologically, it was out of step.
We're all influenced by everything unless we're locked in an empty room.
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.
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.
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.
When you admire someone's work, you are amazed by who you think they are.
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.
You can't hide in life. We are all being watched by some larger vision.
Our memory and the movies keep movie stars alive for us, and Tony Curtis is still a star.
I hate it when people talk about Tony Curtis and say: 'His real name was Bernie Schwartz... ' That was just the name that he was given at birth. It's not the person he lived his life with, and became.
'Puffball' is a love story... no, it's a life story.
I've always thought there was something very marvelous and magical about mirrors, and that they are connected to memory as well.
Film can be more of a reality than a page with words can ever be.
Too many films today feel formulaic and familiar. I prefer it when the familiar is made to feel strange.
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.
I've been told my movies are difficult to market.
How can you judge one film against another?
I wouldn't like to be a non-believer in anything.
I don't look back on any film I've done with fondness or pride.
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.'
Marketing is such a key issue; in fact, the marketing department is often involved in the approval of scripts now.
I like the probability of the impossible.
You cannot intellectualize yourself out of obsession. You cannot cure yourself of it.
When I went to the cinema as a boy, when I saw a war film, I thought the general was the star, and that Cary Grant was an extra. I had no idea about the structure of film, but I loved going to the cinema.
We can't get our youth back.
I think the big studios shaped and formed the artists that they put under contract.
Grief is an emotion that's almost unplayable because you're in a separate emotional state; it's an inconsolable emotion.
Our lives are full of all the genres. Fear and hope and sadness.
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.
I realized I've spent all my life creating a past.
I generally try to avoid talking about my old films - I find it difficult.
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.
There's horror in your life, believe me, whether it's coming, or you've just been lucky to miss it today.
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.
We all have our beliefs or our agnosticism.
When my sister and I were very young, my father used to tell us fairy stories that he'd made up. My mother was always telling him that he should write them down, but he would say, 'Well, they've all been done before. There are so many blooming books in the world - why should I write another one?'
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.
