Peter Greenaway Quotes

The pretence that numbers are not the humble creation of man, but are the exacting language of the Universe and therefore possess the secret of all things, is comforting, terrifying and mesmeric.

The floorboards point in parallel lines to a vanishing point that does not concern us -- somewhere beyond the opera house, across the streets, across the houses of the suburbs, all the way to a hypothetical single dot... on the sea's horizon. Far from this sour drama.

What are you -- some kind of addict? Is this where you come to...

It's sort of cathartic -- the naked exposure -- don't you think? You couldn't do it voluntarily -- could you? It's under duress -- so somehow legitimate. Circumstances beyond our control. I think I enjoyed that.

On the other hand, I view the whole matter from a cosmic perspective. I don't take a position. I believe that there are no more positions to take, no certainties, no facts. Many people find this confusing about my films; they say I am hiding out behind irony. But from a cosmic viewpoint, it is eternally unimportant whether one lives or not.

The whole of this studio is bonded; that is to say, we are not officially in Japan per se, but rather, in what is considered for these purposes an adjunct of the customs shed at Narita airport. Officially, we are not here because we are pornographic. It's a rather curious situation.

Each word is pumped up with consonant cholesterol. It's full of fat words. The pages cream with subcutaneous fat. New letters are gilded like showy teeth, making comprehension constipated and exorbitantly metalled.

When I was young I hated my body because it was so thin -- now I try not to look at it too much because it's so old. There perhaps might have been just six months when I felt comfortable with it -- when I discovered alcohol for the first time and learnt to drive and was fattening out and had just met your mother.

On the same day as I started to keep my own pillow-book -- I met my future husband for the first time. I was six, he was ten. We did not exchange a word. He had been hand-picked by my father's publisher.

I'm an excuse for medical experiments and art theory. You must get me out of here and out of the hospital.

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A woman materialises behind Prospero -- leaning lightly on the back of his chair -- she is alternately a Titianesque nude and then the Vesalius figure -- flayed … she leans lightly over and kisses Prospero on the cheek. The kiss leaves a blood-red mark on his withered cheek. Prospero shivers.

Then I think you have a choice -- please your mother or face criminal charges.

Smut is a target for reconstructed cricketing accidents -- he is the Cricket Saint Sebastian.

How can an opera express this complicated question of bedsheets?