Peter Greenaway

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

“I obviously irritate people. I obviously antagonise them.”

“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.”

“Anybody who writes a diary insists it must be read by someone else.”

“English culture is highly literary-based.”

“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.”

“As for critics, one mediocre writer is more valuable than ten good critics. They are like haughty, barren spinsters lodged in a maternity ward.”