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Peter Greenaway Quotes
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Peter Greenaway, is a British film director, screenwriter, and artist. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular. Common traits in his film are the scenic composition and illumination and the contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death. Wikipedia  

✵ 5. April 1942
Peter Greenaway photo
Peter Greenaway: 266 quotes4 likes

Peter Greenaway Quotes

“That comes from most people having an American film model in their heads which is nothing but a total illusionary masturbatory massage.”

Peter Greenaway

In an interview in Die Zeit, 24 Nov 1989
Interviews

“The large body of the swan wedged in the shattered glass of the car windscreen fills the film frame. Its head is bent back on itself in a parody of its orthodox gracefulness.”

Peter Greenaway

A Zed and Two Noughts

“Painting: Once upon a time a painting was a two-dimensional representation; now it is anything its author thinks is appropriate.”

Peter Greenaway

Rosa: The Death of a Composer

“A thrown-stone trajectory is a good metaphor for so many phenomena: the curve of an event, any event; the curve of a life, any life; the curve of a hypothesis; the curve experienced in the manufacture of a work of art; the curve of interest experienced in the manufacture of a catalogue.”

Peter Greenaway

Flying Out of This World

“Obviously, I am the cook. The cook is the director. He arranges the menu, the seating order of the guests; he gives refuge to the lovers; he prepares the repast of the lover's body. The cook is a perfectionist and a rationalist, a portrait of myself.”

Peter Greenaway

In an interview in Die Zeit, 24 Nov 1989
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

“It tells you how to boil water. What expression to wear when you are eating eggs. How to starve. When to eat. What your first meal should be. What your last meal should be. It says more about death than eating and more about living than cooking.”

Peter Greenaway

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

“I've just been reading -- stuff to make your hair curl -- you go in that toilet -- that's the sort of stuff people read -- not this sort of thing -- don't you feel out of touch? Does this stuff make money? I bet you're the only person to have read this book -- but I bet you every man in this restaurant has had a read of that stuff in there… makes you think, doesn't it?”

Peter Greenaway

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

“His writing -- in so many languages -- made me a sign-post pointing east, west, north and south. I had shoes in German, stockings in French, gloves in Hebrew, a hat with a veil in Italian. He only kept me naked where I was most accustomed to wearing clothes.”

Peter Greenaway

Nagiko
The Pillow Book

“Four handsome, naked, female dancers separate themselves from the crowd in Prospero's cloak… and they dance. From now on -- they become Prospero's dancers -- they mark out a four-figured symmetrical space around him -- dancing in perfect unison -- a strange, prancing, high-stepping, complicated, frankly sensuous dance -- danced with great firmness and confidence -- their eroticism is aimed only at themselves -- no mincing or quarter given -- their erotic confidence is demonstrative and challenging.”

Peter Greenaway

Prospero's Books

“If every man is supposed to think of sex once every nine minutes, what on earth does he think of in the other eight?”

Peter Greenaway

Introductory quotation from the published script.
8 1/2 Women

“It is the trajectory of a thrown stone. It follows the hump of a humped-back whale from nose to tail. It's bounded like a smooth, sheep-cropped, grassy hill. It is a graph-line through a grey, blue, and then a grey again, sky.”

Peter Greenaway

Flying Out of This World

“That's all. Thank you. You may go.”

Peter Greenaway

The Belly of An Architect

“You should be allowed to rub out and start again, it means that you are human. The purists are tedious, they tell you a mistake is like an enduring black mark. Nonsense -- better to be human than some infernal machine never going wrong.”

Peter Greenaway

One of the calligraphers
The Pillow Book

“Two children die. An accident and a suicide amongst so many murders. A chance death and a death of self-recrimination. Smut and the Skipping Girl have been aping their parents and elders -- perhaps they could now teach them a lesson -- all the machinations and game-playing and adjusting for sexual and emotional positioning is not worth the effort.”

Peter Greenaway

Fear of Drowning By Numbers

“I was continually connected with the whole world and never got any rest. At the moment, I spend only a few hours weekly on the net, that's just better for me.”

Peter Greenaway

In an interview in Page, May 1999
Interviews

“The whole of this studio is bonded; that is to say, we are not officially in Japan per se, but rather, in what is considered for these purposes an adjunct of the customs shed at Narita airport. Officially, we are not here because we are pornographic. It's a rather curious situation.”

Peter Greenaway

During the filming of Prospero's Books, quoted in an interview in American Film, Nov/Dec 1991
Prospero's Books

“Dots […]: Small marks variously made to indicate infinity, hesitation, duplication, or lack of imagination.”

Peter Greenaway

Rosa: The Death of a Composer

“In the film The Belly of an Architect, an architect from Chicago organizes an exhibition of his favourite architect Etienne-Lous Boullée (1728-1799). I wrote an account of this hypothetical exhibition as though it had been seen by an unlikely Boullée contemporary -- Jane Austen (1775-1817). She made a prim but perceptive account of her progress through the corridors and halls of the Vittoriano in the centre of Rome -- a building constructed long after both of these eminent personages were dead.”

Peter Greenaway

Watching Water

“A woman materialises behind Prospero -- leaning lightly on the back of his chair -- she is alternately a Titianesque nude and then the Vesalius figure -- flayed … she leans lightly over and kisses Prospero on the cheek. The kiss leaves a blood-red mark on his withered cheek. Prospero shivers.”

Peter Greenaway

Prospero's Books

“One [film] is based on the Medea myth about a woman who kills her own child -- The Love of Ruins. It is almost a technical exercise to see if I can convince an audience or make an audience sympathetic to a woman who kills her own child.”

Peter Greenaway

In an interview in Film Quarterly, Winter 1991-92
Interviews

“Prospero wears a large, heavy, dark-blue cloak or gown that enfolds him like a quilted blanket… it is darkly embroidered with small wine-coloured beads and swirls of black vegetation… it has long strings and ornate tassels that trail to the ground… it is a garment that has often been worn… a little frayed and scuffed. Later it will be seen to be capable of changing colour… in seven stages comparable to the power of Prospero's magic… black, brown, dark blue, light blue, purple, dark red and fiery red… and to have a vivid lining embroidered with dazzling stars -- a lining that is only revealed in flashes as when a dark butterfly momentarily uncovers coloured underwings.”

Peter Greenaway

Prospero's Books

“As author in control of the plot I can choose and dictate the fall-out of events from any number of infinite possibilities -- which is a very volatile state of affairs, suggesting the ephemerality of fictional narrative. I can choose to have seven characters and kill six of them off in the first five minutes. I can have seventy characters and squash them under a fallen rock, make them copulate with beasts, sit them on the moon or turn their hair white. This casual condition of authorship is irresponsible.”

Peter Greenaway

Watching Water

“Now you've opened your mouth, do you expect me to lose interest?”

Peter Greenaway

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

“It's sort of cathartic -- the naked exposure -- don't you think? You couldn't do it voluntarily -- could you? It's under duress -- so somehow legitimate. Circumstances beyond our control. I think I enjoyed that.”

Peter Greenaway

Philip
8 1/2 Women

“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

Philip
8 1/2 Women

“To a man of honour that is no choice.”

Peter Greenaway

Philip and Kito
8 1/2 Women

“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

In an interview in Cineaste, 1991
Interviews

“Smut is a target for reconstructed cricketing accidents -- he is the Cricket Saint Sebastian.”

Peter Greenaway

Fear of Drowning By Numbers

“In the game of Dawn Card-Castles, fifty-two playing cards are stacked up into a castle in a draught-free space: the player can determine the dreams of the next night if he awakes before the castle collapses. Those players who wish to dream of Romance build their castle with the seven of hearts.”

Peter Greenaway

Drowning By Numbers

“Farewells can be both beautiful and despicable. Saying farewell to one who is loved is very complicated.”

Peter Greenaway

, quoted in Peter Greenaway's The
The Pillow Book

“I married. I became a wife. I acquired a husband. I had a ceremonial wedding in style. Whichever way you say it -- it was bound to end badly.”

Peter Greenaway

Nagiko's journal for Feb 12 1990
The Pillow Book

“Counting is the most simple and primitive of narratives -- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 -- a tale with a beginning, a middle and an end and a sense of progression -- arriving at a finish of two digits -- a goal attained, a dénouement reached.”

Peter Greenaway

Fear of Drowning By Numbers

“You don't go into the National Gallery of any famous capital city and cry, sob, laugh, fall about on the floor, become very angry -- it's a completely different reaction. It's a reaction which is to do with a much more composed sense of regarding an image; it's a reaction with a thought process as opposed to an immediate emotional reaction.”

Peter Greenaway

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

“What is your favorite book?”

Peter Greenaway

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

“The film begins with a visual list of eight and a half Japanese Pachinko Parlours filmed in several Japanese cities -- Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto.”

Peter Greenaway

8 1/2 Women

“What good are all these books to you? You can't eat them! How can they make you happy?”

Peter Greenaway

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

“She picks up the baby and contemplates the Bonsai-bush, and, as we watch, in the growing half-dark, the Bonsai-bush flowers. On the black-and-white film, the thousands of flower-petals blush a deep red.”

Peter Greenaway

Conclusion of the published script.
The Pillow Book

“Now, at this very minute, another thing is happening which we cannot hear because most paintings do not have a sound-track. Peter is inventing the word "simony" to explain ecclesiastical purchase-power, for which, since his Church later exercised it so expertly, Simon Magus ought to be revered as a patron not a rogue.”

Peter Greenaway

Flying Out of This World

“Are these clues? Which ones are important? Which ones are incidental? Which ones are circumstantial?”

Peter Greenaway

Rosa: The Death of a Composer

“What else could there be?”

Peter Greenaway

The Belly of An Architect

“He spoilt it -- he spoke.”

Peter Greenaway

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

“ "It was only a film."”

Peter Greenaway

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

“How safe are we here?”

Peter Greenaway

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

“Does Albert read?”

Peter Greenaway

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

“Blind eyes cannot read.”

Peter Greenaway

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

“You weren't asleep then.”

Peter Greenaway

8 1/2 Women

“Only from bad books.”

Peter Greenaway

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

“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.”

Peter Greenaway

, in an interview with Greenaway in the Washington DC City Paper, 6 Apr 1990
About Greenaway

“Men are so shit scared of female activities, especially if they are clandestine.”

Peter Greenaway

In an interview in Cineaste, 1991
Interviews