Peter Greenaway quotes - page 2

I think it is really important to be in some way provocative -- either intellectually or viscerally -- in the films one makes. (Peter Greenaway)
I would be curious about one of those Jane Austen women -- you know -- long-suffering, dutiful -- but all right in the end -- a plump 19th century type, five foot four, ringlets, brown eyes, long fingers. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Investigation is never complete. View quote
Peter Greenaway
I have always had severe problems with Austrians. ... Musical, churchy, uptight... nice legs... hypocritical... authoritarian... always insist their dustbins are very clean. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Only cinema narrows its concern down to its content, that is to its story. It should, instead, concern itself with its form, its structure. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Cinema is far too rich and capable a medium to be merely left to the storytellers. View quote
Peter Greenaway
It's so miserable and so easy to keep slamming Titanic -- I'll shut up. View quote
Peter Greenaway
There have been innumerable films about film-making, but Otto e Mezzo was a film about the processes of thinking about making a film -- certainly the most enjoyable part of any cinema creation. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Words reproduce themselves pleasurably too. View quote
Peter Greenaway
The range of human skin colours is quite narrow when you think about it -- and I do -- and subtle -- beige, pink, white, tan, taupe, ... View quote
Peter Greenaway
A French critic referred to me as a gay pessimist, with gay used in its older sense, and talked of Cocteau in the same breath. (Peter Greenaway)
That comes from most people having an American film model in their heads which is nothing but a total illusionary masturbatory massage. View quote
Peter Greenaway
If every man is supposed to think of sex once every nine minutes, what on earth does he think of in the other eight? View quote
Peter Greenaway
You should be allowed to rub out and start again, it means that you are human. The purists are tedious, they tell you a mistake is like an enduring black mark. Nonsense -- better to be human than some infernal machine never going wrong. View quote
Peter Greenaway
I was continually connected with the whole world and never got any rest. At the moment, I spend only a few hours weekly on the net, that's just better for me. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Imagine a world where nothing is stable. In the West, we have three moving elements -- Air, Fire, Water -- but at least we can depend on the fourth. View quote
Peter Greenaway
There are basically only two subject matters in all Western culture: sex and death. We do have some ability to manipulate sex nowadays. We have no ability, and never will have, to manipulate death. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Blind eyes cannot read. View quote
Peter Greenaway
If Good approved of his creature's creation, He breathed the painted clay-model into life by signing His name. View quote
Peter Greenaway
One of my heroes, almost necessarily from what I'm saying, of course, is Borges, who is a supreme master of doing thing -- being a data bank -- and the beauty of this economy is that he could have written War and Peace in three or four pages; who knows, it might have been a better book. View quote
Peter Greenaway
I made a very bad mistake; I miscounted these scraps of information on the record as 92, and in continual homage to this man who had been so influential to me, I began creating or constructing my own films on this so-called "magic" number of 92 ... but when I eventually made a film about John Cage and met him, I explained this to him, and he found it very amusing because there are only 90 stories on the two sides of the record, and I'd based three years of my filmic career on this mathematical error! (Peter Greenaway)
My personal obsessions are much more interesting to me than other people's. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Americans don't understand what metaphor in cinema is about. They're extremely good at making straightforward, linear narrative movies, which entertain superbly. But they very rarely do anything else. View quote
Peter Greenaway
I've always been fascinated by maps and cartography. A map tells you where you've been, where you are, and where you're going -- in a sense it's three tenses in one. View quote
Peter Greenaway
I am certain that there are two things in life which are dependable -- the delights of the flesh and the delights of literature. I have had the good fortune to bring them together and enjoy them together in full quantity. View quote
Peter Greenaway