Peter Greenaway Quotes

Men are much simpler mechanisms than women. Nothing changes them ...even when they have a midlife crisis, they do it in a mindless way... that's why I think we should let men go off and have affairs and drive fast cars and dream of being virile - and we should run the world.

Often, though, the passivity of the woman's role weighs on me, suffocates me. Rather than wait for his pleasure, I would like to take it, to run wild. Is it that which pushes me into lesbianism? It terrifies me. Do women act thus? Does June go to Henry when she wants him? Does she mount him? Does she wait for him? He guides my inexperienced hands. It is like a forest fire, to be with him. New places of my body are aroused and burnt. He is incendiary. I leave him in an unquenchable fever.

Now you are no longer a giggling child, smiling at whoever comes along. You are a woman with power. Learn to control your smile, and you can control what men will think about you.

I know men are delicate origami creatures who need women to unfold them, hold them when they cry. But I am tired of being your savior and I am tired of telling you why.

I began quite early in life to sense the thrill a girl attains in supplying money to a man.

The phenomenon of the woman who's asked what movie she wants to see, and she says, "I don't know. What do you want to see?" It's a tiny version of a big tendency. Women need to say, "This is what I want."

Women's worst invention was the plow. With the beginning of plow agriculture, men's roles became extremely powerful. Women lost their ancient jobs as collectors.

Lars von Trier is very, very, very clever about women. He gives the woman a space that I don't know any filmmaker does. Because in Breaking The Waves, protagonist Emily Watson is the Christ. Which man is doing that? I don't know any man giving that space to a woman. No one.

The average woman is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes; the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else.

Women-in-jeopardy movies are, in essence, the updated versions of men dying to save the princess from the dragon to earn her love. They are modern-day training films for teaching women to select the best protectors while weeding out the rest.

A woman who occupies the same realm of thought with man, who can explore with him the depths of science, comprehend the steps of progress through the long past and prophesy those of the momentous future, must ever be surprised and aggravated with his assumptions of leadership and superiority, a superiority she never concedes, an authority she utterly repudiates.

I think women rule the world and that no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn't allowed him to do or encouraged him to do.

Put any woman in an area run mostly by men and rumors will fly. Unless you make it very clear that you are off limits, there is also a certain competitiveness that sets in. Some men are either trying to run you out of town or get into your pants. They don't seem to know any other way to deal with a woman. If you're not a sexual object, you're a threat.

Maybe it's the culture, maybe it's the cliché of Latino machismo, but the Mediterranean male character is more dull than the female character. Women are more surprising and they have fewer prejudices.

Guys like you make life easy for some women.

I hate that we look at women who choose not to run a country as having given up. I get angry that, when a woman decides to hold off on gunning for a promotion because she wants to have a baby, other women whisper that 'she's throwing away her potential.' That is when we're not supporting our own. Who are we to put such a limited definition on success?

I consider being female such a unique gift, such a sacred joy, in ways that run so deep I can't articulate them. It's a special kind of privilege to be born into the body you wanted, to embrace the essence of your gender even as you recognize what you are up against. Even as you seek to redefine it.

Men are not dogs. We merely think we are and, on occasion, act as if we are. But, by believing in our nobler nature, women have the amazing power to inspire us to live up to it.

Rather than seek to be squired and dated by their rivals why should it not be possible for women to find relaxation and pleasure in the company of their 'inferiors'? They would need to shed their desperate need to admire a man, and accept the gentler role of loving him. A learned woman cannot castrate a truck-driver like she can her intellectual rival, because he has no exaggerated respect for her bookish capacities. The alternative to conventional education is not stupidity, and many a clever girl needs the corrective of a humbler soul's genuine wisdom.

A woman's biography - with about eight famous historical exceptions - so often turns out to be the story of a man and the woman who helped his career.

Everything I do is going to contain the message that men who are going to be comfortable with powerful women are going to be more powerful men

Women hold the power because we have the vaginas. If you're in a heterosexual relationship and you're a female, you win.

[The Women's Room] is one of those pieces of fiction that reveals itself in a different way every time. It's incredible.

Women have plenty of roles in which they can serve with distinction: some of us even run countries. But generally we are better at wielding the handbag than the bayonet.

I liked the idea of giving Eligible a feminist flavor. While I do think that in Pride and Prejudice, Liz Bennet is very bold, she is also very restricted in terms of what's appropriate for her to do and the ways it's appropriate for her to behave. One of the differences between Pride and Prejudice and Eligible is that my female characters take more initiative in their romantic lives.