The rules are learnt in order to be broken, but if you don’t know them, then something is missing.
Meaning of the quote
This quote means that learning the rules is important, but it's also okay to break those rules sometimes. If you don't know the rules at all, you're missing out on something important. It's like learning how to play a game - you need to know the rules first before you can start changing them or finding new ways to play.
About Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Roeg was an acclaimed English film director and cinematographer, best known for his visually stunning and nonlinear films like Performance, Walkabout, and Don’t Look Now. He was a highly influential filmmaker who inspired many directors, and his work was recognized as some of the greatest British films of all time.
More quotes from Nicolas Roeg
The rules are learnt in order to be broken, but if you don’t know them, then something is missing.
English film director and cinematographer
And later I thought, I can’t think how anyone can become a director without learning the craft of cinematography.
English film director and cinematographer
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.
English film director and cinematographer
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.
English film director and cinematographer
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.
English film director and cinematographer
Years ago I had a house in Sussex, it was like Arcadia, with an old Victorian bridge, a pond and the Downs.
English film director and cinematographer
Movies are not scripts – movies are films; they’re not books, they’re not the theatre.
English film director and cinematographer
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.
English film director and cinematographer
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.
English film director and cinematographer
You make the movie through the cinematography – it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.
English film director and cinematographer
Fear has many faces.
English film director and cinematographer
Children’s finger-painting came under the arts, but movies didn’t.
English film director and cinematographer
But in marketing, the familiar is everything, and that is controlled by the studio. That is reaching its apogee now.
English film director and cinematographer
Marketing is a very good thing, but it shouldn’t control everything. It should be the tool, not that which dictates.
English film director and cinematographer
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.
English film director and cinematographer
In life, we all learn from everyone.
English film director and cinematographer