Peter Greenaway

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

For so many filmmakers, cinema is a means to an end.

If you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a filmmaker.

In a world where we can all be our own filmmakers, the old elites are disappearing and there is no desire to look at somebody else's dream anymore because you can go off and make your own.

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 don't believe in the deplorable notion of realism in the cinema: you can over-reach it, and it becomes as false as convention.

I think that films or indeed any art work should be made in a way that they are infinitely viewable; so that you could go back to it time and time again, not necessarily immediately but over a space of time, and see new things in it, or new ways of looking at it.

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

I've always been fascinated by Eisenstein.

Cinema basically examines a personality first and the body afterward.

Whispering can be a rest from a noisy world of words.

English culture is highly literary-based.

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

I obviously irritate people. I obviously antagonise them.

The Sistine Chapel is an extraordinary work of education - it lays out all the early books of the Bible.

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

All religions have always hated females.

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 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?'

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

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.

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

You can play lacrosse all over the world provided you know where the goalposts are.