Peter Greenaway Quotes

If I wasn't a film-maker, I'd be a film critic. It's the only thing I'd be qualified to do.

Belly was not a bad movie. It was visually very interesting.

I'll tell you, I think that the Internet has provided an enormous boost to film criticism by giving people an opportunity to self publish or to find sites that are friendly.

I don't mind other guys seeing movies I want to see and then writing about them. That's fine, especially when it's the 'New Yorker''s Anthony Lane, because he knows this stuff pretty well.

No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.

I have tremendous affection for New York and my life, but I'm a satirist at heart. And it's easy to satirize New York.

I don't think that 'No Man's Land' is a comedy. I think that it's a serious film with a good sense of humour.

Pauline Kael had seen Nashville, and she loved Nashville. When I called her, she immediately responded to me because we had become friends, and I told her how great this film was, and she told me, "Well, I'll have to see it for myself." So I showed it to her, and she flipped.

Don't go see the movies, I'm a troll. I think the movie was great, but their biggest mistake was me.

I mean, the old film critics just excoriated me.

It's hard to see a film one time and really "get it," and write fully and intelligently about it. That's a review. That's not film criticism.

Confession: When I went to see The Empire Strikes Back I found myself glancing at my watch. The Force is with us, indeed, and a lot of it is hot air. It's a measure of my mixed feelings about The Empire Strikes Back that I'm not at all sure that I understand the plot. The Empire Strikes Back is about as personal as a Christmas card from a bank.

New York critics - I hear when one of them watched "A Star Is Born", he talked back to the screen.

It's hard to see a film one time and really "get it," and write fully and intelligently about it. That's a review. That's not film criticism. And there's so many expectations involved, too. You're going in to see the latest Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick film, you really have high hopes, and you can't help but find that it's not exactly what you had in your head going in. Until you can watch it again, you can't accept the work for what it intends to be. It takes at least a second viewing.

I have never seen it (Jaws 4) but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.

Even the European critics... They said Hostel is the smartest film they'd seen on capitalism and how it's gone too far.

[The UN should remain in New York] because every country needs a cesspool. And the UN is always interesting as a theater of the absurd.

Somehow the pantsless gay man is not bringing the romance, Scott.

It's hard to look too grand when you're led by someone who looks like a pudding with legs.

Do you get the feeling with Sarah Palin, in high school, she was voted least likely to write a book and most likely to burn one?

I should start with an apology to Rudy Giuliani. I said every sentence Rudy utters has a noun, a verb, and 9/11 in it. I was wrong. He called me to tell me after Pat Robertson's endorsement, there's an Amen in every sentence he says too.

On the Disc, the Gods aren't so much worshipped, as they are blamed.

I have seen lampoons of my work. And I have really enjoyed them. But I would never do another version of The Exorcist.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever" he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"