Peter Greenaway Quotes

The predominant colour of the kitchen -- its walls, cupboards, floor, shelves -- with all the ancillary rooms -- pantries, larders, cold stores, and sculleries, is green -- Hooker's dark green, leaf-green, emerald, faded turquoise, and eau-de-nile -- like the colours of a dark wet jungle.

… like us? Counting up the minutes -- have we spent half an hour together?

A final splash plops … all water-movement ceases and the screen is a black velvet void.

Prospero has always felt most at ease in a study, surrounded by books.

I have always had severe problems with Austrians. … Musical, churchy, uptight... nice legs... hypocritical... authoritarian... always insist their dustbins are very clean.

Lincoln: A politician who enjoyed the theatre and died because of its convenient darknesses. A celebrated make of car. A town in Lincolnshire, England. A certain colour green.

I like sleeping. (after a pause) You were conceived in this bed.

The Endgame: "The object of this game is to dare to fall with a noose around your neck from a place sufficiently off the ground such that a fall will hang you. The object of the game is to punish those who have caused great unhappiness by their selfish actions. This is the best game of all because the winner is also the loser and the judge's decision is always final."

Two lifetimes -- yours and mine.

Now you've opened your mouth, do you expect me to lose interest?

You could spend a lifetime reading in here.

What do you mean -- Happy anniversary? It's not my birthday.

I like a lot of glasses about -- it highers the tone.

That's just the sort of remark you would make -- you'd just be intent on whipping it in, whipping it out, and wiping it on your jacket! Look at your jacket! Looks like a pig field! Your nails could do with a clean. Show me your nails! God! Why can't I have some bloody quality in my associates?

Counting makes even hideous events bearable as simply more of the same -- the counting of wedding-rings, spectacles, teeth and bodies disassociates them from their context -- to make the ultimate obscene blasphemy of bureaucratic insensitivity. Engage the mind with numbing recitation to make it empty of reaction.