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

Peter Greenaway

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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. "

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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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" Everything I try to do wants to be able to push communication through the notion of the visual image. "

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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 think my films are always quite self-reflexive and always question 'why am I doing this, is this the right way to do it, what is cinema for, does it have a purpose?' "

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" Try this experiment: Pick a famous movie - 'Casablanca,' say - and summarize the plot in one sentence. Is that plot you just described the thing you remember most about it? Doubtful. Narrative is a necessary cement, but it disappears from memory. "

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" I've always been fascinated by Eisenstein. "

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" The Sistine Chapel is an extraordinary work of education - it lays out all the early books of the Bible. "

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" All religions have always hated females. "

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" 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'm a Darwinian. "

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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. "

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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 have more than enough deodorised, over-the-top, sentimental cinema. Let's try to bring a little human intelligence into things. It can be very rewarding. "

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" Some people would say again that my attitudes are cold and cerebral; I suppose if you're thinking about American sentimental movies, I suppose they would be. "

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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 obviously irritate people. I obviously antagonise them. "

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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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" English culture is highly literary-based. "

Peter Greenaway

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

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" 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

" 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

" We have to change the educational curricula and put a lot more emphasis on how important seeing and looking is. "

Peter Greenaway

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

Peter Greenaway

" Anybody who writes a diary insists it must be read by someone else. "

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. "

Peter Greenaway

" 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. "

Peter Greenaway

" 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. "

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

Peter Greenaway