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

Peter Greenaway

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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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" 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'm a Darwinian. "

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

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

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

Peter Greenaway

" 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. "

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

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

" 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

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

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

" 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

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

Peter Greenaway

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

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

Peter Greenaway

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

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

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

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

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

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

" English culture is highly literary-based. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

Peter Greenaway