Peter Greenaway Quotes - Page 6

Cinema basically examines a personality first and the body afterward.

My favourite way of watching the cinema is the biggest possible cinema you can find, with the biggest possible screen, and the loudest possible Dolby - but just me. Nobody else.

There are, after all, approaches to be made other than the dependable routes that massage sentimental expectations and provide easy opportunities for emotional identification.

I don't believe that one has to tear down the cinema screen in order to renew cinema. But new input and new energy are lacking. They are flowing above all into the television technologies. We must, therefore, concentrate on the CD-ROM.

We all live to a formula. Maybe the secret lies in keeping that formula secret.

There are many photos of Eisenstein. I think he was quite vain, and he liked photos of him. Being a virgin at 33 is strange now, but let's not be too high-minded about that.

Churchill was a good writer but a bad historian.

Since Caesar, we know his historians are liars. The good writers get read. Bad history doesn't get read.

Painting is the supreme form of expression; you don't need to 'read' painting.

We can have our own choices in sex partners, but you cannot avoid birth and death. It's the content of all religion and art. We familiarize them and if we're more honest, we'd be far more relaxed about them.

If you're a Shakespeare fan, isn't that a way to negotiate sex and death?

I went to art school, and every Tuesday and Friday we drew the nude. If you look at Western painting, male and female nudes are in the center of every painting. It's difficult and exciting to draw the nude. Why get so upset about this? It's our duty to break taboos.

Eisenstein was a good editor. I was trained as a film editor, and I've no doubt that the editor is key to a film.

I got in trouble with the stern-faced Russians who didn't want me to create a guy who is mortal.