Peter Greenaway Quotes
born 1942 Wales
Peter Greenaway CBE (born 5 April 1942) is a Welsh film director.
Random Peter Greenaway quote
160 quotes
I am certain that there are two things in life which are dependable -- the delights of the flesh and the delights of literature. I have had the good fortune to bring them together and enjoy them together in full quantity.
"… like us? Counting up the minutes -- have we spent half an hour together?"
The film begins with a visual list of eight and a half Japanese Pachinko Parlours filmed in several Japanese cities -- Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto.
Life is full of a thousand red herrings, and it takes the history of a civilisation to work out which are the red herrings and which aren't.
Leaving slowly,
sucking in cold air round a warm tongue,
ennui synchronized to the pulse,
reports from a coiled trachea,
It is only irregular clocks...
The major sweep of this book's living is too often marred by qualifying. It is hedged about with ifs and buts and if onlys and howevers, excuses for a life that is about to shut its covers for the last time and then crumple into dust in an unseen and never-to-be-remembered library.
There is some comfort to be had in contemplating the folly of so many dead, don't you think? … and more comfort still in contemplating the continuity.
Where is a book before it is born? Does a book grow like a tree? Who are a book's parents? Does a book need two parents -- a mother and a father? Can a book be born inside another book? And where is the parent book of books?
All the material is fictional and develops its own eight and a half private, coelesced journeys, where, perhaps not unexpectedly, the females can run faster than the men and trade their freedoms by exhausting the male sexual fantasies and replacing them by some of their own.
Esmerelda, the grieving widow, continues to burn and scream. In our minds we rush to save her from the consuming flames. But cannot.
"No. If you don't read, are you safe?"
"We must ask Kito to come over."
We wait -- it seems for minutes -- looking at the night sky. Then, suddenly breaking the silence and making us start with alarm and fear... there is a savage, heart-rending, gurgling scream.
Are these clues? Which ones are important? Which ones are incidental? Which ones are circumstantial?
Blood: A red substance believed to be capable of supporting life but which in a theatrical drama invariably indicates death.
Nun 1: Sir, it is only a play... with music. Do not distress yourself.
Four soiled bedsheets sewn together to make a screen. One for spittle. One for urine. One for semen. One for blood. All for tears.
I have always had severe problems with Austrians. … Musical, churchy, uptight... nice legs... hypocritical... authoritarian... always insist their dustbins are very clean.
A trembling and some laughter,
a squirt of pee, a spit,
whispers of the heart,
a smell,
the drift to sleep,
pursuit by Gods,
exposure of the bum,
mathematics ...
From the ninth book, "The Book of Secrets"