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" I don't want to be a film-maker. I think painting is far more exciting and profound. "

Peter Greenaway

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

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

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

Peter Greenaway

" English culture is highly literary-based. "

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

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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

" 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

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

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

" 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

" 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. "

Peter Greenaway

" 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. "

Peter Greenaway

" I've always been fascinated by Eisenstein. "

Peter Greenaway

" 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. "

Peter Greenaway

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

Peter Greenaway

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

Peter Greenaway

" 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. "

Peter Greenaway

" I'm a Darwinian. "

Peter Greenaway

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

Peter Greenaway

" 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

" 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. "

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. "

Peter Greenaway

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

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. "

Peter Greenaway