Greenaway Films Quotes & Sayings

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 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

The way people are treated in them [prisons] is very similar to gulags. — Jerry Brown

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

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

If FBI agents can't be trusted to wiretap within the law, why trust them to carry weapons or make arrests? — Ronald Kessler

There is more grace in God's heart than there is sin in your past. — Erwin W. Lutzer

What, I ask, drives me to disorder? How can I diagnose myself? All I feel, most immediately, is the most anguished need for physical love and mental companionship - — Susan Sontag

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

Racism breeds racism in reverse. — Mary Brave Bird

I think my films are very English. That certain emotional distance, interest in the world, interest in irony. These are all deeply English propositions. — 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 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

Disquite Sonnet
I wish that I could find the words to tell
You were it hurts; nothing breaking my skin
Slices whispering in my brain like hell
Leaking suggestions of a morose grin
Cannot collect my thoughts long enough to
Share them in an understandable way
So I lock my lips firmly and walk through
Life, searching for the perfect words to say
Trapped in my head, I seek to be let out
Grasping connections with those who might know
What it feels like, alone in a crowd, doubt
Filling my body with reasons to go
Face to face, I might not find the right phrase
But I hope someone hears me anyway — Kathy Trithardt

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

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

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

Literally draw a detailed map-like an organization chart-of interlocking ownership and affiliates, many of which were also publicly traded. So, identifying one stock led him to a dozen other potential investments. To tirelessly pull threads is the lesson that I learned from Mike Price. — Seth Klarman