Peter Greenaway: Trending quotes (page 4)

“It's precisely on the Internet that the majority of the writing is terribly bad and uninteresting.”

Peter Greenaway

In an interview in Page, May 1999
Interviews

“My personal obsessions are much more interesting to me than other people's.”

Peter Greenaway

In an interview in Film Comment, May/June 1990
Interviews

People , Personality

“Blood: A red substance believed to be capable of supporting life but which in a theatrical drama invariably indicates death.”

Peter Greenaway

Rosa: The Death of a Composer

Life , Death , Support

“Whispering can be a rest from a noisy world of words.”

Peter Greenaway

The tenth book, "The Book of Silence"
The Pillow Book

World

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

Peter Greenaway

Albert
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

“These ideas are present in all sorts of unrelated cultures -- the Easter Islands, Celtic mythology, Plato's Symposium with its notion that we are all originally hermaphrodite. We became too arrogant and so the gods split us down the middle, forcing us to spend our lives chasing our other half. If we start being arrogant all over again, God will come down and split each half in half, and it will take four people to assemble a fifth, making our lives peculiarly, desperately difficult.”

Peter Greenaway

In an interview in the Washington DC City Paper, 6 Apr 1990
Interviews

God , People , Idea

“There is some comfort to be had in contemplating the folly of so many dead, don't you think? … and more comfort still in contemplating the continuity.”

Peter Greenaway

The Belly of An Architect

Thinking , Dead

“It could be said now that all animals live in zoos, whether it is a zoo in Regent's Park, London or a Nigerian Game Reserve. Perhaps what's left to argue is only the zoo's quality.”

Peter Greenaway

From the introduction to the published script.
A Zed and Two Noughts

Game , Animals

“Perhaps. I need writing. Don't ask me why -- just take out your pen and write your name on my arm -- go on.”

Peter Greenaway

Jerome and Nagiko
The Pillow Book

“Cinema: An illusion that can only satisfactorily happen in the dark.”

Peter Greenaway

Rosa: The Death of a Composer

“The film has written and spoken dialogue in twenty-five languages-English, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Latin, Hebrew, necrotic Egyptian … and it has written calligraphic text on paper, wood, and flesh, on flat and curved surfaces, vertically and horizontally, on both living and dead flesh, in neon, on screens, in projection, as sub-title, inter-title, and sur-title, as High Art and low art, as advertisement and banker's check and registration plate, on photograph, on blackboard, as letter correspondence, as photocopy facsimile, and spoken, chanted, and sung, with and without music … a mocking challenge. You want text? Cinema wants text? Cinema pretends to eschew text? Then we can give you text to mock that smug suggestion that cinema thinks it is pictures.”

Peter Greenaway

"105 Years of Illustrated Text" in the Zoetrope All-Story, Vol. 5 No. 1.
105 Years of Illustrated Text

Art , Music , Thinking , Dead

“The game Flights of Fancy or Reverse Strip Jump is played from as high a jumping-point as a competitor will dare. After each successful jump, the competitor is allowing to put on an article of clothing. Thirteen jumps is normally more than enough to see a competitor fully dressed for the day.”

Peter Greenaway

Drowning By Numbers

Game , Success , Clothes

“What do you mean -- Happy anniversary? It's not my birthday.”

Peter Greenaway

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

Birthday , Happiness

“A hand cannot write on itself.”

Peter Greenaway

From the ninth book, "The Book of Secrets"
The Pillow Book

“Atlas, the man who carries the world, becomes the book of the maps of the world. An example of man, or God, into book. Few have that honour.”

Peter Greenaway

Flying Out of This World

God , Books , World

“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.”

Peter Greenaway

From the first book, "The Agenda"
The Pillow Book

Books

“I can -- your mother's dead.”

Peter Greenaway

Storey and Philip
8 1/2 Women

Dead

“ "What days are those Albert? And what's it like?"”

Peter Greenaway

Albert and Mitchel
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

“You can play lacrosse all over the world provided you know where the goalposts are.”

Peter Greenaway

In an interview in Artforum, Nov. 83
Interviews

World

“You can say with safety that nowadays women have finally acknowledged their position of not liking men. We could say now that women don't like men. They can acknowledge that they prefer the company of their own kind. I think we can also say generally that most men do not like other men. Most men prefer to like women. So women are the most liked by the most people. Men love women, women love children, and children love hamsters. A one-way slide. There is little going back the other way. Can hamsters love children? I leave you to deduce the rest.”

Peter Greenaway

Palmira
8 1/2 Women

Love , Women , Men , Children