Derek Jarman Quotes & Sayings

I want the world to be filled with white fluffy duckies — Derek Jarman

Pain can be alleviated by morphine but the pain of social ostracism cannot be taken away. — Derek Jarman

All men are homosexual, some turn straight. It must be very odd to be a straight man because your sexuality is hopelessly defensive. It's like an ideal of racial purity. — Derek Jarman

Understand that sexuality is as wide as the sea. Understand that your morality is not law. Understand that we are you. Understand that if we decide to have sex whether safe, safer, or unsafe, it is our decision and you have no rights in our lovemaking. — Derek Jarman

Painters used red like spice — Derek Jarman

These names: gay, queer, homosexual are limiting. I would love to finish with them. We're going to have to decide which terms to use and where we use them. For me to use the word 'queer' is a liberation; it was a word that frightened me, but no longer. — Derek Jarman

On December 22, 1986, finding I was body positive, I set myself a target: I would disclose my secret and survive Margaret Thatcher. I did. Now I have set my sights on the millennium and a world where we are all equal. — Derek Jarman

The queers of the sixties, like those since, have connived with their repression under a veneer of respectability. Good mannered city queens in suits and pinstripes, so busy establishing themselves, were useless at changing anything. — Derek Jarman

I'm not afraid of death but I am afraid of dying. — Derek Jarman

But the wind does not stop for my thoughts. It whips across the flooded gravel pits drumming up waves on their waters that glint hard and metallic in the night, over the shingle, rustling the dead gorse and skeletal bugloss, running in rivulets through the parched grass - while I sit here in the dark holding a candle that throws my divided shadow across the room and gathers my thoughts to the flame like moths.
I have not moved for many hours. Years, a lifetime, eddy past: one, two, three: into the early hours, the clock chimes. The wind is singing now — Derek Jarman

People say to me, "You make fantastic films" and I say, "No, I make documentaries. — Derek Jarman

Oh how Shakespeare would have loved cinema! — Derek Jarman

The Last Of England works with image and sound, a language which is nearer to poetry than prose. It tells its story quite happily in silent images, in contrast to a word-bound cinema ... — Derek Jarman

I think of the area of magic as a metaphor for the homosexual situation. You know, magic which is banned and dangerous, difficult and mysterious. I can see that use of magic in the Cocteau films, in Kenneth Anger and very much in Eisenstein. Maybe it is an uncomfortable, banned area which is disruptive, and maybe it is a metaphor for the gay situation. — Derek Jarman

The Gautama Buddha instructs me to walk away from illness. But he wasn't attached to a drip. — Derek Jarman

If Gucci handbags were still in fashion Greenaway would carry his scripts in them. — Derek Jarman

The preserve of ambition and folly in pursuit of illusion, or delusion. — Derek Jarman

I wouldn't wish the eighties on anyone, it was the time when all that was rotten bubbled to the surface. If you were not at the receiving end of this mayhem you could be unaware of it. — Derek Jarman

The slow-witted approach to the HIV epidemic was the result of a thousand years of Christian malpractice and the childlike approach of the church to sexuality. If any single man was responsible, it was Augustine of Hippo who murdered his way to sainthood spouting on about the sins located in his genitals. — Derek Jarman

Red protects itself. No colour is as territorial. It stakes a claim, is on the alert against the spectrum. — Derek Jarman

Indian yellow, banned. Cows were poisoned with mango leaves and the colour was made from their urine. It is the bright yellow in Indian miniatures. Although yellow occupies one-twentieth of the spectrum, it is the brightest colour. — Derek Jarman

If you can, trap me. I'll make a good patient because I was brought up in the environment of authority; it's going to be hard to pull me in though- I've been running all my life, playing truant. If you can capture me I'll buckle down. I'll loathe you in secret and put on a good face. — Derek Jarman

Violet has the shortest wavelength of the spectrum. Behind it, the invisible ultraviolet. Roses are Red, Violets are Blue. Poor violet, violated for a rhyme. — Derek Jarman

a dream world, a world of magic and ritual, yet there are images there of the burning cars and radar systems, which remind you there is a price to be paid in order to gain this dream in the face of a world of violence. — Derek Jarman

One of the joys our technological civilization has lost is the excitement with which seasonal flowers and fruits were welcomed; the first daffodil, strawberry or cherry are now things of the past, along with their precious moment of arrival. Even the tangerine
now a satsuma or clementine
appears de-pipped months before Christmas. — Derek Jarman