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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. "

Peter Greenaway

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" I've always been fascinated by Eisenstein. "

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

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

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

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

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" 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

" 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

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

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

" 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

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

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

Peter Greenaway

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

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

" 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

" All religions have always hated females. "

Peter Greenaway

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

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

" English culture is highly literary-based. "

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

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

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

Peter Greenaway

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

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'm a Darwinian. "

Peter Greenaway

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

Peter Greenaway