Peter Greenaway Quotes
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'Have you read all of them?'
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In one of the rooms of the Fortuny Palace there are eight books from Prospero's Library. They are magical books. In many senses all books are magical.
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I'm an excuse for medical experiments and art theory. You must get me out of here and out of the hospital.
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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.
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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.
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I want to describe the Body as a Book, a Book as a Body, and this Body and this Book will be the first Volume of Thirteen Volumes.
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You can't write. That's not writing. It's scribbling. Distasteful scribbling. Why can't you write properly?
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To be an atheist you have to have ten thousand times more imagination than if you are a religious fundamentalist. You must take the responsibility to acquire information, digest and use it to understand what you can.
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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.
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Words reproduce themselves pleasurably too.
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It can hardly be said that Greenaway is unaware of his demoniac cleverness, but he unearths the nuggets buried in his work in a spirit of generosity. They are not so much possessions to be admired as gifts to be shared.
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Each word is pumped up with consonant cholesterol. It's full of fat words. The pages cream with subcutaneous fat. New letters are gilded like showy teeth, making comprehension constipated and exorbitantly metalled.
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Jerome never liked me - preferred my sister who was a little fool excited by modern literature - all swear-words and scatology - before it became fashionable.
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Cleverness: A predisposition to irritate excessively.
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It's a big criticism of Greenaway films that they are far too interested in formalism and not enough interested in notions of emotional content. It's a criticism I can fully understand from a public that has been brought up by Hollywood movies that demand intense emotional rapport.
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The film begins with a visual list of eight and a half Japanese Pachinko Parlours filmed in several Japanese cities - Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto.
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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.
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I think there is no future whatsoever in 3D. It does nothing to the grammar and syntax or vocabulary of cinema. And you get fed up with it in exactly 3 minutes.
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If a player in the game of Deadman's Catch drops a skittle, he is obliged to suffer a succession of handicaps. First to catch using one hand, then to catch kneeling on one knee, then on two knees, then with one eye closed. If a player finally drops a catch with both eyes closed, then he is out and must take his place in the winding-sheet.
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Blind eyes cannot read.
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I've always been fascinated by Eisenstein.
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Shoes: gloves for the feet.
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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.
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A little gold and a little charcoal, / A little bone, a little wax. / A little alcohol, a little horror and a little gum. / A little ivory, / a little sulphur, / a little damp dust, / a sluice of fluids.