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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

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

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" I can't think of anyone who has done anything remotely useful after the age of 80. "

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" I always think that art is one of the most wonderful exciting curious ways to learn. I have no worries or apologies about art being used as a teaching medium. "

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" Whether you're Godard or Almodovar or Scorsese, it's text, text, text. Everything begins with the text, and this is a source of great anguish to me. So please let cinema get on with doing what it does best, which is expressing ideas in visual terms. "

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" I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before, but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. We are all dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and I think we must never forget that. After all, even iconoclasts only exist with respect to that which they destroy. "

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" All religions have always hated females. "

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" I want to be a prime creator - as every self-regarding artist should do. "

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" If you knew when you were going to die, wouldn't you make your life more worthwhile? "

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" I believe there's no such thing as history; there's only historians, and in English, we've got this word 'his'tory, but what about her story? So that, in the end, the history of the world would be a history of every single one of its members, but of course, you could never get to grips with that. "

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" We all know that we're going to die, but we don't know when. That's not a blessing, that's a curse. "

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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. "

Peter Greenaway

" English culture is highly literary-based. "

Peter Greenaway

" We do not need a text-based cinema... we need an image-based cinema. "

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" Cinema ceases to be passive and becomes active: you, the audience, are now, in some senses, in charge of the filmmaking process. You have all got mobile phones, you have all got cam recorders, and you've all got laptops, so you're all filmmakers. "

Peter Greenaway

" If you think about it, most cinema is built along 19th-century models. You would hardly think that the cinema had discovered James Joyce sometimes. "

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" All really worthwhile artists, creators, use the technology of their time, and anybody who doesn't becomes immediately a fossil. "

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" If you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a filmmaker. "

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" It's very difficult to understand, but I'm looking for a nonnarrative, multiscreen, present-tense cinema. Narrative is an artifact created by us. It does not exist at all in nature; it is a construct made by us, and I wonder whether we need the narrative anymore. "

Peter Greenaway

" I believe that cinema died on the 31 September 1983 when the zapper, or the remote control, was introduced into the living rooms of the world. "

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" I suppose I am gently cynical about notions of who we think we are, but I certainly don't hate my fellow man. I think my cinema, although it might often deal with death and decay, is highly celebratory. "

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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. "

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" I'm sorry - you know, culture is elitist. Culture has to be elitist: it's about seeing and knowing and about knowledge. "

Peter Greenaway

" Religion is there to say, 'Hey, you don't have to worry - there's an afterlife.' "

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" For 8,000 years, we've had lyric poetry; for 400 years we've had the novel: theatre hands its meaning down in text. Let's find a medium whose total, sole responsibility is the world as seen as a form of visual intelligence. Surely, surely, surely the cinema should be that phenomenon. "

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" My biggest critical success was 'The Draughtsman's Contract,' but then it wasn't the English who particularly thought so; it was the French, who are much more interested in Cartesian logic: in finding your way through more cerebral puzzle-making, if you wish. "

Peter Greenaway

" 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. "

Peter Greenaway

" Most people are visually illiterate. Most people don't understand images: they don't understand how to interpret them or how to manufacture them. "

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" Cinema basically examines a personality first and the body afterward. "

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" I admit that death is not just about you, it's also about the people who love you. "

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" I obviously irritate people. I obviously antagonise them. "

Peter Greenaway