Peter Greenaway quotes - page 4

I once saw a film where the main character didn't speak for the first half hour. (Peter Greenaway)
Georgie doesn't like babies do you Georgie? Some days, Georgie, I think you behave like a bloke. View quote
Peter Greenaway
On the same day as I started to keep my own pillow-book -- I met my future husband for the first time. I was six, he was ten. We did not exchange a word. He had been hand-picked by my father's publisher. View quote
Peter Greenaway
It's strange. In the last five minutes you have used my Christian name over and over again and never before. People I like learn my name too late. View quote
Peter Greenaway
The major sweep of this book's living is too often marred by qualifying. It is hedged about with ifs and buts and if onlys and howevers, excuses for a life that is about to shut its covers for the last time and then crumple into dust in an unseen and never-to-be-remembered library. View quote
Peter Greenaway
All my films are somewhat experimental, they are all, each one, taking a certain amount of risk, but there's always the basic assumption that we should be able to appreciate the cinema as much with the mind as we can through emotional empathy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. View quote
Peter Greenaway
We went to Kyoto -- back to Japan -- to work in the Matsuo Tiasha shrine which Sei Shonagon had visited regularly. I couldn't give up such an opportunity. I was also a little homesick. We didn't finish walking the cat-walk until midnight when all the audience had gone. I didn't mind -- Sei Shonagon had watched the moon rise in that garden a thousand years ago -- I could have walked up and down that path all night long. View quote
Peter Greenaway
And I've also written a play called Miranda, about what happens afterwards on the ship on the way home. It's about what happens to innocence and how it has to be destroyed. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Isn't that why people keep diaries -- to be read by someone else? Why would they keep them otherwise? View quote
Peter Greenaway
The Romans are very equivocal about this building. They call it the typewriter or the wedding cake... But whatever you think of it -- it gives you the most amazing views of Rome. It's like a box at the theatre at which Rome is the play. View quote
Peter Greenaway
It's like Shelley. Like Werther. Like a Japanese Ophelia. Like a beautiful Oriental Lady in the Lake. (Peter Greenaway)
I wouldn't be so interested in her fingers. View quote
Peter Greenaway
When I was young I hated my body because it was so thin -- now I try not to look at it too much because it's so old. There perhaps might have been just six months when I felt comfortable with it -- when I discovered alcohol for the first time and learnt to drive and was fattening out and had just met your mother. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Galba... a miserable sort of man... bisexual... fancied mature slaves, especially if they had been a little mutilated... all his freed men had no fingers on the left hands... he's dead -- died screaming... in a cellar. View quote
Peter Greenaway
No. If you don't read, are you safe? View quote
Peter Greenaway
It is Vesalius' Anatomy of Birth -- a book of drawings and diagrams of human anatomy. Beautiful drawings but -- as the pages turn -- terrible in their frankness... View quote
Peter Greenaway
The world is in his cloak -- figures peer out of its folds -- mythological figures and snakes and pigs and flowers, naked fauns and heavy-breasted sirens and horses' heads -- they sprawl on the flagstones at his feet and peep out from under his arms... View quote
Peter Greenaway
Obviously, I am the cook. The cook is the director. He arranges the menu, the seating order of the guests; he gives refuge to the lovers; he prepares the repast of the lover's body. The cook is a perfectionist and a rationalist, a portrait of myself. View quote
Peter Greenaway
I've just been reading -- stuff to make your hair curl -- you go in that toilet -- that's the sort of stuff people read -- not this sort of thing -- don't you feel out of touch? Does this stuff make money? I bet you're the only person to have read this book -- but I bet you every man in this restaurant has had a read of that stuff in there... makes you think, doesn't it? View quote
Peter Greenaway
I don't know what to say really -- except that you look immortal and I look bereft. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Four handsome, naked, female dancers separate themselves from the crowd in Prospero's cloak... and they dance. From now on -- they become Prospero's dancers -- they mark out a four-figured symmetrical space around him -- dancing in perfect unison -- a strange, prancing, high-stepping, complicated, frankly sensuous dance -- danced with great firmness and confidence -- their eroticism is aimed only at themselves -- no mincing or quarter given -- their erotic confidence is demonstrative and challenging. (Peter Greenaway)
That's all. Thank you. You may go. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Dots [...]: Small marks variously made to indicate infinity, hesitation, duplication, or lack of imagination. View quote
Peter Greenaway
Now you've opened your mouth, do you expect me to lose interest? View quote
Peter Greenaway
You don't go into the National Gallery of any famous capital city and cry, sob, laugh, fall about on the floor, become very angry -- it's a completely different reaction. It's a reaction which is to do with a much more composed sense of regarding an image; it's a reaction with a thought process as opposed to an immediate emotional reaction. View quote
Peter Greenaway