226 Quotes by Peter Greenaway

Jean Renoir once suggested that most true creators have only one idea and spend their lives reworking it, but then very rapidly he added that most people don’t have any ideas at all, so one idea is pretty amazing.

It’s precisely on the Internet that the majority of the writing is terribly bad and uninteresting.

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.

Painting is the supreme form of expression; you don’t need to ‘read’ painting.

I went to art school, and every Tuesday and Friday we drew the nude. If you look at Western painting, male and female nudes are in the center of every painting. It’s difficult and exciting to draw the nude. Why get so upset about this? It’s our duty to break taboos.

There’s more religion in my little finger than there is in the pope. But no, I don’t believe in God. I am an athiest. A Darwinian evolutionist.

I think it is really important to be in some way provocative – either intellectually or viscerally – in the films one makes.

Imagine a world where nothing is stable. In the West, we have three moving elements – Air, Fire, Water – but at least we can depend on the fourth.

What are you – some kind of addict? Is this where you come to...