Peter Greenaway Quotes
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I'm sorry - you know, culture is elitist. Culture has to be elitist: it's about seeing and knowing and about knowledge.
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'Imagine you are sucking the little fingers of a lady... or... no, you wouldn't understand that - since you'd never get that close to a lady - who'd want to get that close to you for God's sake?'
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If every man is supposed to think of sex once every nine minutes, what on earth does he think of in the other eight?
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A hand cannot write on itself.
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Most people are visually illiterate. Most people don't understand images: they don't understand how to interpret them or how to manufacture them.
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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.
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Four soiled bedsheets sewn together to make a screen. One for spittle. One for urine. One for semen. One for blood. All for tears.
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Alas, despite wing implants, feathers and wax, and carnal associations with swans, we will never grow wings. Alas, any true flight we make will always be externally assisted. Alas, the best we can do is fall and believe ourselves flying.
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No Albert - it's not God - it's Michael. My lover. You vowed you would kill him - and you did. And you vowed you would eat him. Now eat him.
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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.
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Try this experiment: Pick a famous movie - 'Casablanca,' say - and summarize the plot in one sentence. Is that plot you just described the thing you remember most about it? Doubtful. Narrative is a necessary cement, but it disappears from memory.
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Secret: A private matter whispered abroad and never kept to oneself. By naming it a secret, we immediately indicate its presence. If we really wanted to keep secrets, we would not have a name for them.
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I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before, but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. We are all dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and I think we must never forget that. After all, even iconoclasts only exist with respect to that which they destroy.
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Cinema ceases to be passive and becomes active: you, the audience, are now, in some senses, in charge of the filmmaking process. You have all got mobile phones, you have all got cam recorders, and you've all got laptops, so you're all filmmakers.
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'You have no right to be jealous of a woman who wants to be more of a woman by watching a man dressed up as a woman.'
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Later this device of mirror and mirror-carriers will be developed and many changes rung from its possibilities.
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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.
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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.
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I suppose I have a concern for this extraordinary, beautiful, amazing, exciting, taxonomically brilliant world that we live in, but we keep fucking it up all the time.
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If you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a filmmaker.
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The letters Z, O and O dominate the front entrance gates of a capital city zoo. They are made of glass and they tower up two giraffes high. They are the width of one elephant and the colour of bottled blue ink.
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Some people would say again that my attitudes are cold and cerebral; I suppose if you're thinking about American sentimental movies, I suppose they would be.
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We wait - it seems for minutes - looking at the night sky. Then, suddenly breaking the silence and making us start with alarm and fear... there is a savage, heart-rending, gurgling scream.
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'Naked! So I can see no pranks and ruses.'