Peter Greenaway Quotes & Sayings

All religions have always hated females. — Peter Greenaway

Many quite popular films are filled with violence. I think the difference between those and my films is that I show the cause and effect of violent activity. It's not a Donald Duck situation where he get a brick in the back of the head and gets up and walks away in the next frame. Mine have violence which keeps Donald Duck in the hospital for six months and creates a trauma which he will remember for the rest of his life. — Peter Greenaway

I always think that art is one of the most wonderful exciting curious ways to learn. I have no worries or apologies about art being used as a teaching medium. — Peter Greenaway

I think my films are always quite self-reflexive and always question 'why am I doing this, is this the right way to do it, what is cinema for, does it have a purpose?' — Peter Greenaway

Cinema is dead, long live cinema. — Peter Greenaway

I think it is really important to be in some way provocative
either intellectually or viscerally
in the films one makes. — Peter Greenaway

As you probably know, I'm often accused of intellectual exhibitionism and all forms of elitism. Although I can understand this point of view, it's a rather wasted argument because, if we regard areas of information as being elite and therefore somehow not usable, it means our centre-ground of activity becomes very, very impoverished. — Peter Greenaway

Painting is the supreme form of expression; you don't need to 'read' painting. — Peter Greenaway

A really intelligent man makes an indifferent painter. For painting requires a certain blindness, a partial refusal to be aware of all the options ... — 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, taup ... — 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. — Peter Greenaway

The game Flights of Fancy or Reverse Strip Jump is played from as high a jumping-point as a competitor will dare. After each successful jump, the competitor is allowing to put on an article of clothing. Thirteen jumps is normally more than enough to see a competitor fully dressed for the day. — Peter Greenaway

English culture is highly literary-based. — Peter Greenaway

I never go to the cinema. I can't stand sitting in the dark with strangers
all of us obliged to share the same emotional experiences
it's too intimate. I like to be emotional in private. — Peter Greenaway

I acknowledge Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. They are prostlytizers of English socialism preaching to the converted and telling us what we already know. Cinema is best served away from documentary neo-realism. I come from a tradition of post-post-Italian neo-realism in England, where we've produced the best television in the world. But to paraphrase Truffaut, the English have no visual imagination. — Peter Greenaway

We don't need virtual reality, we need virtual unreality. — Peter Greenaway

This is where I begin to do the writing. I am now going to be the pen and not the paper. — Peter Greenaway

I still would like you to feel the enthusiasm that all those people felt in the twenties and thirties, that indeed we had discovered, with cinema, the great 20th-century, all-embracing medium. — Peter Greenaway

Churchill was a good writer but a bad historian. — 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. — Peter Greenaway

There is no obligation for the author of a film to believe in, or to sympathise with, the moral behaviour of his characters. Nor is he necessarily to be accredited with the same opinions as his characters. Nor is it necessary or obligatory for him to believe in the tenet of his construction - all of which is a disclaimer to the notion that the author of Drowning by Numbers believes that all men are weak, enfeebled, loutish, boorish and generally inadequate and incompetent as partners for women. But it's a thought. — 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. — Peter Greenaway

There's no such thing as history, only historians. That's how we know about the past. — Peter Greenaway

If you're a Shakespeare fan, isn't that a way to negotiate sex and death? — Peter Greenaway

An American critic wrote that she would rather be forced to read the New York telephone directory three times than watch the film A Zed and Two Noughts, a third of which was a homage to Vermeer. Conceivably, if you are a list-enthusiast like me, the New York telephone directory might be fascinating, demographically, geographically, historically, typographically, cartographically; but I am sure no compliment was intended. — Peter Greenaway

There is visual illiteracy with text-oriented films like bloody 'Harry Potter' and 'Lord of the Rings.' ... — Peter Greenaway

For so many filmmakers, cinema is a means to an end. — Peter Greenaway

All the material is fictional and develops its own eight and a half private, coelesced journeys, where, perhaps not unexpectedly, the females can run faster than the men and trade their freedoms by exhausting the male sexual fantasies and replacing them by some of their own. — Peter Greenaway

My second Christian name is John. Good solid bourgeois Christian name, like my first name, Peter, a rock. Minerals. Build on rock, rocks, uranium. Peter and John were two of the twelve apostles - arguable the two most significant. Were my parents hedging their bets? — Peter Greenaway

I don't believe that one has to tear down the cinema screen in order to renew cinema. But new input and new energy are lacking. They are flowing above all into the television technologies. We must, therefore, concentrate on the CD-ROM. — Peter Greenaway

I don't want to become an ivory tower filmmaker. That sounds peculiar, but I want to be a mainstream filmmaker. I want the largest possible audience that I can find - but, of course, on my terms. — Peter Greenaway

There are those who think that Zeffirelli's Hamlet is the way to treat Shakespeare. I think that cinema can handle much more. We somehow expect cinema to provide us with meaning, to console us. But that's not the purpose of art. — Peter Greenaway

I want to regard my public as infinitely intelligent, as understanding notions of the suspension of disbelief and as realising all the time that this is not a slice of life, this is openly a film. — 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 favourite way of watching the cinema is the biggest possible cinema you can find, with the biggest possible screen, and the loudest possible Dolby - but just me. Nobody else. — Peter Greenaway

I don't have any particular wish to be polemical or didactic; I don't have a 'message', but what I do thoroughly enjoy are those works of art, not necessarily in the cinema, but in the other arts as well, which have an encyclopaedic world. — Peter Greenaway

In practically every film you experience, you can see the director following the text. Illustrating the words first, making the pictures after, and, alas, so often not making pictures at all, but holding up the camera to do its mimetic worst. — Peter Greenaway

I have a very, very secret drive to become a dilettante, without the pejorative overtones or the obligation to produce myself. There's so much to examine, so much to contemplate. I have enormous enthusiasm when I start a new project but then there's the meetings and the counter-meetings, the rehearsals, the struggles. You have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get your dreams realised. — Peter Greenaway

You can play lacrosse all over the world provided you know where the goalposts are. — Peter Greenaway

I like to think of The Falls as my own personal encyclopedia Greenaway-ensis. — Peter Greenaway

I always think that if you deal with extremely emotional, even melodramatic, subject matter, as I constantly do, the best way to handle those situations is at a sufficient remove. It's like a doctor and a nurse and a casualty situation. You can't help the patient and you can't help yourself by emoting. And I don't think cinema is intended for therapy, so I object also to that huge, massive manipulation which is perpetrated on the public. — Peter Greenaway

We have to move away from the concept of screening in cinemas. This can be achieved with the new technologies. I enjoy my films and the fact that I can include you in them as well. Cinema is only a small part of a much greater phenomenon. We transcend the barriers of culture. DVDs' image quality and longevity provide us with new prospects. They are a powerful medium. I think they were invented especially for me. — Peter Greenaway

I suppose I am gently cynical about notions of who we think we are, but I certainly don't hate my fellow man. I think my cinema, although it might often deal with death and decay, is highly celebratory. — Peter Greenaway

If Good approved of his creature's creation, He breathed the painted clay-model into life by signing His name. — Peter Greenaway

The pretence that numbers are not the humble creation of man, but are the exacting language of the Universe and therefore possess the secret of all things, is comforting, terrifying and mesmeric. — Peter Greenaway

Creation, to me, is to try to orchestrate the universe to understand what surrounds us. Even if, to accomplish that, we use all sorts of strategems which in the end prove completely incapable of staving off chaos. — Peter Greenaway

Anybody who writes a diary insists it must be read by someone else. — Peter Greenaway

I share this interest in the weird, strange, unusual, surreal. — Peter Greenaway

Cinema is far too rich and capable a medium to be merely left to the storytellers. — Peter Greenaway

I admit that death is not just about you, it's also about the people who love you. — 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. — Peter Greenaway

In a world where we can all be our own filmmakers, the old elites are disappearing and there is no desire to look at somebody else's dream anymore because you can go off and make your own. — Peter Greenaway

Blind eyes cannot read. — Peter Greenaway

Itch to read, scratch to understand. — Peter Greenaway

I also think that everyone has an elitist approach to his own art, a complex knowledge of it, whether he is a clockmaker or an engineer. And I think it's perfectly legitimate to make use of this knowledge because it enriches the overall texture of life. — Peter Greenaway

I don't believe in the deplorable notion of realism in the cinema: you can over-reach it, and it becomes as false as convention. — Peter Greenaway

Most cinema is not about images but text. Why on earth have we based cinema on text? Why can't we break that umbilical cord? Why do we have to pollute cinema? — Peter Greenaway

We all live to a formula. Maybe the secret lies in keeping that formula secret. — Peter Greenaway

Works of art are never finished, just stopped. — 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. — Peter Greenaway

Film is such an extraordinary rich medium which can handle so many different modes of operation, combining together in the same place all these extraordinary disciplines which may be executed in their own right - music, writing, picture making of all kinds, and I often feel that some filmmakers make films with one eye closed and two hands tied behind their backs. — Peter Greenaway

Cinema basically examines a personality first and the body afterward. — Peter Greenaway

I like a lot of glasses about
it highers the tone. — 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. — Peter Greenaway

Investigation is never complete. — Peter Greenaway

It serves the purpose of not serving a purpose, surely quite a valid one. — Peter Greenaway

Too many proofs spoil the truth. — Peter Greenaway

I really, sincerely believe that one should trust the work, and not the author. — Peter Greenaway

It seems to me that dominant cinema seems to require an empathy or a sympathy between the film and the audience which is basically to do with the manipulation of the emotions and it seems to me again
and this is a very subjective position
that most cinema seems to trivialise the emotions, sentimentalising or romanticising them. — Peter Greenaway

Tulse Luper, who without too many confessions, in a sense, is a fictive version of me. I have to say he has far more exciting adventures, and certainly a lot of them sexual, than ever I've experienced. But in a sense, what you do with an alter ego, you give them all sorts of permissions and licences which you know you'll never be able to embrace in your real life. — 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. — Peter Greenaway

I think that films or indeed any art work should be made in a way that they are infinitely viewable; so that you could go back to it time and time again, not necessarily immediately but over a space of time, and see new things in it, or new ways of looking at it. — Peter Greenaway

On the other hand, I view the whole matter from a cosmic perspective. I don't take a position. I believe that there are no more positions to take, no certainties, no facts. Many people find this confusing about my films; they say I am hiding out behind irony. But from a cosmic viewpoint, it is eternally unimportant whether one lives or not. — Peter Greenaway

Here was opportunity to make an audience walk and move, be sociable in a way never dreamed of by the rigors of cinema-watching, in circumstances where many different perspectives could be brought to bear on a series of phenomena associated with the topics under consideration. Yet all the time it was a subjective creation under the auspices of light and sound, dealing with a large slice of cinema's vocabulary. — Peter Greenaway

My audience is comprised of three categories. The first category contains the people who decide after the first five minutes that they've made a mistake and leave. The second category is the people who give the film a chance and leave annoyed after 40 minutes. The third category includes the people that watch the whole film and return to see it again. If I'm able to persuade 33% of the audience to stay, then I can say that I've succeeded. — 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. — Peter Greenaway

If you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a filmmaker. — Peter Greenaway

If you never lived out your sexuality - it's a great force, and if you try to fight it, what does that create? Energy: positive and negative, self-loathing. — Peter Greenaway

Cinema is not a playground for Sharon Stone. — Peter Greenaway

It's so miserable and so easy to keep slamming Titanic
I'll shut up. — Peter Greenaway

Since Caesar, we know his historians are liars. The good writers get read. Bad history doesn't get read. — 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. — Peter Greenaway

We are all united by the phenomenon that we have a body and that body is universally the same, more or less. If we lose sight of that perspective, everything can desperately suffer. — Peter Greenaway

I don't want to be a film-maker. I think painting is far more exciting and profound. — Peter Greenaway

I wanted to make a cinema of ideas, not plots, and to use the same aesthetics as painting, which has always paid great attention to formal devices of structure, composition and framing. — Peter Greenaway

As for critics, one mediocre writer is more valuable than ten good critics. They are like haughty, barren spinsters lodged in a maternity ward. — 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. — 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

I imagine if you had built the Newton Memorial outside Paris ... it would have undoubtedly shown the violence of 1870 and 1914 and 1942 and 1945 - even 1968! Consider building a vast cube of stone merely to register the effects of violence - marked and dated as an indictment. — Peter Greenaway

A hand cannot write on itself. — Peter Greenaway

I have always had severe problems with Austrians ... Musical, churchy, uptight ... nice legs ... hypocritical ... authoritarian ... always insist their dustbins are very clean. — Peter Greenaway

I certainly don't believe you documentary filmmakers. Like me, you are involved in making fiction, and your fiction is just as well organized and just as well predicated, but the big difference between me and you is that I'm honest and you're dishonest. I know I'm telling you lies. — Peter Greenaway

What are you
some kind of addict? Is this where you come to ... — Peter Greenaway

We all know that we're going to die, but we don't know when. That's not a blessing, that's a curse. — Peter Greenaway

There's more religion in my little finger than there is in the pope. But no, I don't believe in God. I am an athiest. A Darwinian evolutionist. — Peter Greenaway

There are many photos of Eisenstein. I think he was quite vain, and he liked photos of him. Being a virgin at 33 is strange now, but let's not be too high-minded about that. — Peter Greenaway

Whispering can be a rest from a noisy world of words. — Peter Greenaway

I do indeed think that cinema is mortal. There is a lot of evidence already that it is dying on its feet. — Peter Greenaway

Every historian has a vested interest. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was not about the Roman but the British empire. What price the truth? — Peter Greenaway

Continuity is boring. — Peter Greenaway