Peter Greenaway Quotes
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And I've also written a play called Miranda, about what happens afterwards on the ship on the way home. It's about what happens to innocence and how it has to be destroyed.
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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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... I would certainly like to work with Dennehy again. When he was presented with the script he didn't know me from Adam, and why should he, small-time eccentric, esoteric Englishman that I am?
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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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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.
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Cinema basically examines a personality first and the body afterward.
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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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The world is in his cloak - figures peer out of its folds - mythological figures and snakes and pigs and flowers, naked fauns and heavy-breasted sirens and horses' heads - they sprawl on the flagstones at his feet and peep out from under his arms...
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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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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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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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This book has neither the virtue of irony nor deserves the sympathy reserved for the truly mad.
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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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'Have you read all of them?'
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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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Blind eyes cannot read.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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I've always been fascinated by Eisenstein.
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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.