Peter Greenaway

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

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

“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.”

“I'm a Darwinian.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I don't want to be a film-maker. I think painting is far more exciting and profound.”

“We all know that we're going to die, but we don't know when. That's not a blessing, that's a curse.”

“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.”

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

“All religions have always hated females.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Cinema basically examines a personality first and the body afterward.”

“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.”

“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?'”