The rules are learnt in order to be broken, but if you don't know them, then something is missing.

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.

The rules are learnt in order to be broken, but if you don't know them, then something is missing.

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.

Marketing is a very good thing, but it shouldn't control everything. It should be the tool, not that which dictates.

Years ago I had a house in Sussex, it was like Arcadia, with an old Victorian bridge, a pond and the Downs.

And later I thought, I can't think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography.

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.

But in marketing, the familiar is everything, and that is controlled by the studio. That is reaching its apogee now.

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.

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.

In life, we all learn from everyone.

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

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.

Fear has many faces.

You make the movie through the cinematography - it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.

Children's finger-painting came under the arts, but movies didn't.

'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.

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.

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.

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.

Film remains completely mystical and mysterious to me.

How can you judge one film against another?

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 generally try to avoid talking about my old films - I find it difficult.

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!

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 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 realized I've spent all my life creating a past.

I was always a bit arty-farty as a boy. 'Come on, Mr. Arty-Farty,' my sister used to say to me.

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

I've always admired the tradition of storytellers who sat in the public market and told their stories to gathered crowds. They'd start with a single premise and talk for hours - the notion of one story, ever-changing but never-ending.

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.

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

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

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've used mirrors in a lot of movies. I think the mirror is an extraordinary thing, also the reflective, a reflection in water, etc.

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

My father was an extraordinary man.

Oh, some of my films have been attacked with absolute vitriol!

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

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.

There's horror in your life, believe me, whether it's coming, or you've just been lucky to miss it today.

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

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

We all have our beliefs or our agnosticism.

We're all influenced by everything unless we're locked in an empty room.