Питер Гринуэй цитаты

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„Я люблю кульбиты. А искусство, которое стремится как можно более точно копировать природу, вы сами назвали иллюзионистским. Что хорошего в иллюзиях? Настоящие художники – не иллюзионисты. Иллюзионизм – путь ленивых.“

„Когда человек отчаянно хочет проспать хотя бы ещё одну ночь в стылом бараке, на грязных деревянных нарах, без одеяла, зато с полчищем вшей, из-за которых придётся раздирать себя ногтями до костей, поразительно, на какие чудеса он становится способен.“

„Что мне мешает снимать кино? Сценарий, камера, актёры.“

„У главной суки Третьего рейха, вероятно, единственного существа, чью любовь и преданность полностью разделял её хозяин, появился щенок, которого назвали Вольф. Гитлер всегда считал своё имя Адольф старой формой немецкого «вольф» (волк). То есть косвенно Гитлер как бы признал своё отцовство и, следовательно, по крайней мере метафорически, своё волчье происхождение.“

“Book #8: The Vesalius Anatomy of Birth. As it hits the water, it screams and spurts blood like a pierced heart -- as it sinks, there is a suggestion of entrails.”

“On the same day as I started to keep my own pillow-book -- I met my future husband for the first time. I was six, he was ten. We did not exchange a word. He had been hand-picked by my father's publisher.”

“A final word. Drowning by Numbers is a story of three women who murder their husbands -- one in a bath, one in the sea and one in a swimming pool. It is a black and ironic fairy-tale for adults, half invented by children who are innocently obsessed with sex and death -- especially death. It is a poetic, amoral tale told morally to support the belief that the good are seldom rewarded, the bad go largely unpunished and the innocent are always abused.”

“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.”

“The Endgame: "The object of this game is to dare to fall with a noose around your neck from a place sufficiently off the ground such that a fall will hang you. The object of the game is to punish those who have caused great unhappiness by their selfish actions. This is the best game of all because the winner is also the loser and the judge's decision is always final."”

“… and within five minutes I'd lost interest.”

“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.”

“Finally we hit upon the old cathedral of Amsterdam, which belongs to the Reformed Church and which we remodeled. The owners gave us permission, on certain financial conditions, to shoot the film there. Before that, we had planned to use the cathedral of Cologne, but two days before we began our preparations, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover was shown on German television and the archbishop immediately forbade us from entering the cathedral site!”

“Americans don't understand what metaphor in cinema is about. They're extremely good at making straightforward, linear narrative movies, which entertain superbly. But they very rarely do anything else.”

“Take Mitchel here -- no -- on second thoughts -- don't -- because he's a crude little bugger.”

“It's strange. In the last five minutes you have used my Christian name over and over again and never before. People I like learn my name too late.”

“It serves the purpose of not serving a purpose, surely quite a valid one.”

“Roy, this is my wife, Georgina Spica -- she has a heart of gold and a body to match… and I am Albert Spica and I have a heart of gold and a great deal of money to match.”

“Imagine a world without a fixed point.”

“I never go to the cinema. I can't stand sitting in the dark with strangers -- all of us obliged to share the same emotional experiences -- it's too intimate. I like to be emotional in private.”

“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 …”

“Jerome was dyslexic until he was twelve, before it became fashionable. And he broke every pair of glasses I bought him. He hated wearing glasses. He was good at breaking things. Especially relationships. Just like his father.”

“No -- it's not necessary for a bookkeeper to read all the stock.”

“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.”

“All my films are somewhat experimental, they are all, each one, taking a certain amount of risk, but there's always the basic assumption that we should be able to appreciate the cinema as much with the mind as we can through emotional empathy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.”

“The word for smoke should look like smoke -- the word for rain should look like rain…”

“There is a shy client who uses invisible ink on Nagiko's body to hide his obvious talent. The woman attempts to develop the invisible ink by bathing in warm water, by standing as close as she dare to a hot fire, by washing her body in the juice of onion-skins until the onions make her weep and her tears prove to be the necessary solvent to reveal the writing.”

“We went to Kyoto -- back to Japan -- to work in the Matsuo Tiasha shrine which Sei Shonagon had visited regularly. I couldn't give up such an opportunity. I was also a little homesick. We didn't finish walking the cat-walk until midnight when all the audience had gone. I didn't mind -- Sei Shonagon had watched the moon rise in that garden a thousand years ago -- I could have walked up and down that path all night long.”

“The game of Bees in the Trees is a variant of musical chairs and is best played with funeral music and in the open air. The object of the game is to sit down on a vacant chair when the music stops. If the chair sat in is occupied by bees, it is permissible to arrange a professional foul.”

“How can an opera express this complicated question of bedsheets?”

“Go on. Treat me like the page of a book. Your book.”

“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.”

“And I've also written a play called Miranda, about what happens afterwards on the ship on the way home. It's about what happens to innocence and how it has to be destroyed.”

“The pages are so harmonious in their proportion / disharmony in the contents is impossible.”