Peter Greenaway Quotes
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Why illustrate a great piece of writing whose very advocacy and evocation and efficacy lies within its very existence as writing?
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My biggest critical success was 'The Draughtsman's Contract,' but then it wasn't the English who particularly thought so; it was the French, who are much more interested in Cartesian logic: in finding your way through more cerebral puzzle-making, if you wish.
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Itch to read, scratch to understand.
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Twenty-four pulleys, one hundred counterweights / two lenses, dark shadows...
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Where is a book before it is born? Does a book grow like a tree? Who are a book's parents? Does a book need two parents - a mother and a father? Can a book be born inside another book? And where is the parent book of books?
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Painting: Once upon a time a painting was a two-dimensional representation; now it is anything its author thinks is appropriate.
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It is an awesome sight, repeatedly drawn and painted. How long did it last, this Fall of Angels? Was it all over in an hour? Or did it take days, weeks, years? Is it still going on?
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All really worthwhile artists, creators, use the technology of their time, and anybody who doesn't becomes immediately a fossil.
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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.
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'You could spend a lifetime reading in here.'
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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.
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Dots ...: Small marks variously made to indicate infinity, hesitation, duplication, or lack of imagination.
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We all know that we're going to die, but we don't know when. That's not a blessing, that's a curse.
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... flaunting their erudition and relishing overt staginess, Peter Greenaway's films divide audiences. There are those who are prepared to entertain his conceits and play the game, and others for whom a Greenaway film is about as exciting as a guided tour through an ancient museum where the catalogue has been lost.
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It's very difficult to understand, but I'm looking for a nonnarrative, multiscreen, present-tense cinema. Narrative is an artifact created by us. It does not exist at all in nature; it is a construct made by us, and I wonder whether we need the narrative anymore.
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'Money's not interesting - too easy to get hold of.'
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The book to end all books. The final book. After this, there is no more writing, no more publishing.
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At once, far off... begins a rumbling, droning noise - like a thousand distant flying machines - like the sound of an armada of mechanical birds - a noise reminiscent of implacable, massive stage machinery in a masque or pageant that is several streets away. It is not one sound but many sounds combined. This is the sound of Prospero's magic.
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It is a most unexpected Earthquake in Geneva.
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You should be allowed to rub out and start again, it means that you are human. The purists are tedious, they tell you a mistake is like an enduring black mark. Nonsense - better to be human than some infernal machine never going wrong.
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Nagiko, I am waiting for you. Meet me at the library. Any library. Every library. Yours, Jerome.
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A series of ever-decreasing splashes drip and plop into black water... thus the beginning of the film is reprised.
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Benedictus bene dicap bene asian christian dominum nostrum amen.
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We have more than enough deodorised, over-the-top, sentimental cinema. Let's try to bring a little human intelligence into things. It can be very rewarding.