Peter Greenaway Quotes - Page 2

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• I loved Latin -- the grammar, the difficult tenses, the history -- but for some reason I was very bad at it, shamefully and blushingly bad at it. ... In moments of stress the embarrassment of how bad I was at Latin -- a subject I loved -- really hit me. It was like being laughed at by someone you desperately loved.

  Peter Greenaway

  Stress, Latin, Moments

  Peter Greenaway (1999). “Eight and a half women”, Dis Voir Editions

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• A really intelligent man makes an indifferent painter. For painting requires a certain blindness, a partial refusal to be aware of all the options.

  Peter Greenaway

  Intelligent, Men, Painting

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• I want to regard my public as infinitely intelligent, as understanding notions of the suspension of disbelief and as realising all the time that this is not a slice of life, this is openly a film.

  Peter Greenaway

  Intelligent, Understanding, Want

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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.

  Peter Greenaway

  Religious, Atheist, Responsibility

  Peter Greenaway, Vernon W. Gras (2000). “Peter Greenaway: Interviews”, p.116, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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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.

  Peter Greenaway

  Humble, Men, Creation Of Man

  "Fear of Drowning By Numbers". Book by Peter Greenaway, 1991.

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• As for critics, one mediocre writer is more valuable than ten good critics. They are like haughty, barren spinsters lodged in a maternity ward.

  Peter Greenaway

  Maternity, Barren, Spinsters

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I was born on the 5th April 1942. On Good Friday. Round about crucifixion time. Archbishop Ussher, a man for dates, who calculated that the world began on September 27th 4004 BC, says the crucifixion took place at three o'clock in the afternoon on Good Friday in the year 33 AD. I was right on time.

  Peter Greenaway

  Friday, Men, Years

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• There's no such thing as history, only historians. That's how we know about the past.

  Peter Greenaway

  Past, Historian, Knows

  "'You have naked bodies and genitalia, don't you? Why are you so adolescent?': Director Peter Greenaway on 'Puritan' Americans and the intense sex scenes in 'Eisenstein in Guanajuato'". Interview with Gary M. Kramer, www.salon.com. February 4, 2016.

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• Continuity is boring.

  Peter Greenaway

  Boring, Continuity

  "Biography/ Trivia". www.imdb.com.

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• I have always had severe problems with Austrians. ... Musical, churchy, uptight... nice legs... hypocritical... authoritarian... always insist their dustbins are very clean.

  Peter Greenaway

  Nice, Musical, Uptight

  Peter Greenaway (1999). “Eight and a half women”, Dis Voir Editions

  53 Copy quote

• Imagine a world where nothing is stable. In the West, we have three moving elements -- Air, Fire, Water -- but at least we can depend on the fourth.

  Peter Greenaway

  Moving, Fire, Air

  Peter Greenaway (1999). “Eight and a half women”, Dis Voir Editions

  4 Copy quote

• There's more religion in my little finger than there is in the pope. But no, I don't believe in God. I am an athiest. A Darwinian evolutionist.

  Peter Greenaway

  Believe, Littles, Pope

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• Bill Viola is worth ten Scorseses.

  Peter Greenaway

  Bills, Viola, Ten

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• Every historian has a vested interest. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was not about the Roman but the British empire. What price the truth?

  Peter Greenaway

  Fall, Empires, Decline

  "'You have naked bodies and genitalia, don't you? Why are you so adolescent?': Director Peter Greenaway on 'Puritan' Americans and the intense sex scenes in 'Eisenstein in Guanajuato'". Interview with Gary M. Kramer, www.salon.com. February 4, 2016.

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• I don't want to be a film-maker. I think painting is far more exciting and profound. It's always at the back of my mind - let's give up this silly business of film-making and concentrate on something more satisfying and worthwhile.

  Peter Greenaway

  Thinking, Profound, Want

  "I plan to kill myself when I'm 80". Interview with Xan Brooks, www.theguardian.com. November 15, 2012.

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• There are those who think that Zeffirelli's Hamlet is the way to treat Shakespeare. I think that cinema can handle much more. We somehow expect cinema to provide us with meaning, to console us. But that's not the purpose of art.

  Peter Greenaway

  Art, Thinking, Cinema

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• For so many filmmakers, cinema is a means to an end.

  Peter Greenaway

  Mean, Cinema, Ends

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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.

  Peter Greenaway

  Sex, Two, Western Culture

  Peter Greenaway, Vernon W. Gras (2000). “Peter Greenaway: Interviews”, p.114, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  5 Copy quote

• Life is full of a thousand red herrings, and it takes the history of a civilisation to work out which are the red herrings and which aren't.

  Peter Greenaway

  Work Out, Red, Life Is

  Peter Greenaway, Vernon W. Gras (2000). “Peter Greenaway: Interviews”, p.17, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I don't think we've seen any cinema yet. I think we've seen 100 years of illustrated text.

  Peter Greenaway

  Thinking, Years, Cinema

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I don't believe in the deplorable notion of realism in the cinema: you can over-reach it, and it becomes as false as convention.

  Peter Greenaway

  Believe, Cinema, Realism

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• I don't want to become an ivory tower filmmaker. That sounds peculiar, but I want to be a mainstream filmmaker. I want the largest possible audience that I can find - but, of course, on my terms.

  Peter Greenaway

  Ivory Tower, Sound, Peculiar

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

  Peter Greenaway

  Thinking, Important, Way

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• I like a lot of glasses about - it highers the tone.

  Peter Greenaway

  Glasses, Tone

  "Fictional character: Albert". "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover", 1989.

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• 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

  Distance, Emotional, Thinking

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