226 Quotes by Peter Greenaway

Most cinema is not about images but text. Why on earth have we based cinema on text? Why can’t we break that umbilical cord? Why do we have to pollute cinema?

The range of human skin colours is quite narrow when you think about it – and I do – and subtle – beige, pink, white, tan, taup...

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

There are those who think that Zeffirelli’s Hamlet is the way to treat Shakespeare. I think that cinema can handle much more. We somehow expect cinema to provide us with meaning, to console us. But that’s not the purpose of art.

The best painting is totally non-narrative. It doesn’t have to tell you a story.

There’s no such thing as history, only historians. That’s how we know about the past.

I was born on the 5th April 1942. On Good Friday. Round about crucifixion time. Archbishop Ussher, a man for dates, who calculated that the world began on September 27th 4004 BC, says the crucifixion took place at three o’clock in the afternoon on Good Friday in the year 33 AD. I was right on time.

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.

Every historian has a vested interest. “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” was not about the Roman but the British empire. What price the truth?