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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. "

Peter Greenaway

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

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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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" 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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" 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. "

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" Cinema, which demands suspension of disbelief, is an increasingly naive proposition. "

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

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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've always been fascinated by Eisenstein. "

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" Thanks to secondary education and the Internet, we're all knowledgeable now - if knowledge means the accumulation of facts. Curators are those who know how to maneuver around that knowledge. "

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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. "

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" All religions have always hated females. "

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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. "

Peter Greenaway

" 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?' "

Peter Greenaway

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

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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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" In a world where we can all be our own filmmakers, the old elites are disappearing and there is no desire to look at somebody else's dream anymore because you can go off and make your own. "

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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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" 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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" English culture is highly literary-based. "

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

Peter Greenaway

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

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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. "

Peter Greenaway

" 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. "

Peter Greenaway

" 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

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

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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. "

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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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" 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