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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 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

Doing

Cinema

Always

" 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

Critics

Than

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" All religions have always hated females. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Peter Greenaway

Cinema

Need

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

" English culture is highly literary-based. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Peter Greenaway

Ideas

Doing

" 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. "

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