Peter Greenaway: Trending quotes

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Peter Greenaway: 532 quotes4 likes

“Hadrian… as you know an architect of note… put a lot of faith in stones… died peacefully… planning a Temple to Wisdom… still, he's dead. Nero -- best not to talk about him -- burnt Rome, caused untold misery, deserved to die; died screaming in a summerhouse.”

Peter Greenaway

The Belly of An Architect

“Book #8: The Vesalius Anatomy of Birth. As it hits the water, it screams and spurts blood like a pierced heart -- as it sinks, there is a suggestion of entrails.”

Peter Greenaway

Prospero's Books

“On the same day as I started to keep my own pillow-book -- I met my future husband for the first time. I was six, he was ten. We did not exchange a word. He had been hand-picked by my father's publisher.”

Peter Greenaway

Nagiko's journal for Sep 16 1993
The Pillow Book

“A final word. Drowning by Numbers is a story of three women who murder their husbands -- one in a bath, one in the sea and one in a swimming pool. It is a black and ironic fairy-tale for adults, half invented by children who are innocently obsessed with sex and death -- especially death. It is a poetic, amoral tale told morally to support the belief that the good are seldom rewarded, the bad go largely unpunished and the innocent are always abused.”

Peter Greenaway

Fear of Drowning By Numbers

“We wait -- it seems for minutes -- looking at the night sky. Then, suddenly breaking the silence and making us start with alarm and fear… there is a savage, heart-rending, gurgling scream.”

Peter Greenaway

Prospero's Books

“The Endgame: "The object of this game is to dare to fall with a noose around your neck from a place sufficiently off the ground such that a fall will hang you. The object of the game is to punish those who have caused great unhappiness by their selfish actions. This is the best game of all because the winner is also the loser and the judge's decision is always final."”

Peter Greenaway

Drowning By Numbers

“… and within five minutes I'd lost interest.”

Peter Greenaway

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

“I think that films or indeed any art work should be made in a way that they are infinitely viewable; so that you could go back to it time and time again, not necessarily immediately but over a space of time, and see new things in it, or new ways of looking at it.”

Peter Greenaway

From an interview in Art and Design, no. 49
Interviews

“Finally we hit upon the old cathedral of Amsterdam, which belongs to the Reformed Church and which we remodeled. The owners gave us permission, on certain financial conditions, to shoot the film there. Before that, we had planned to use the cathedral of Cologne, but two days before we began our preparations, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover was shown on German television and the archbishop immediately forbade us from entering the cathedral site!”

Peter Greenaway

From an interview in Positif, January 1994
Interviews

“Americans don't understand what metaphor in cinema is about. They're extremely good at making straightforward, linear narrative movies, which entertain superbly. But they very rarely do anything else.”

Peter Greenaway

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

“Take Mitchel here -- no -- on second thoughts -- don't -- because he's a crude little bugger.”

Peter Greenaway

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

“It's strange. In the last five minutes you have used my Christian name over and over again and never before. People I like learn my name too late.”

Peter Greenaway

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

“It serves the purpose of not serving a purpose, surely quite a valid one.”

Peter Greenaway

In an interview in Artforum, Nov. 83
Interviews

“Roy, this is my wife, Georgina Spica -- she has a heart of gold and a body to match… and I am Albert Spica and I have a heart of gold and a great deal of money to match.”

Peter Greenaway

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

“Imagine a world without a fixed point.”

Peter Greenaway

8 1/2 Women

“I never go to the cinema. I can't stand sitting in the dark with strangers -- all of us obliged to share the same emotional experiences -- it's too intimate. I like to be emotional in private.”

Peter Greenaway

Philip
8 1/2 Women

“A trembling and some laughter, / a squirt of pee, a spit, / whispers of the heart, / a smell, / the drift to sleep, / pursuit by Gods, / exposure of the bum, / mathematics …”

Peter Greenaway

"The Schultz Song"
M is for Man, Music, and Mozart

“Jerome was dyslexic until he was twelve, before it became fashionable. And he broke every pair of glasses I bought him. He hated wearing glasses. He was good at breaking things. Especially relationships. Just like his father.”

Peter Greenaway

Jerome's mother
The Pillow Book

“No -- it's not necessary for a bookkeeper to read all the stock.”

Peter Greenaway

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

“The major sweep of this book's living is too often marred by qualifying. It is hedged about with ifs and buts and if onlys and howevers, excuses for a life that is about to shut its covers for the last time and then crumple into dust in an unseen and never-to-be-remembered library.”

Peter Greenaway

From the fourth book, "The Book of Impotence"
The Pillow Book