Peter Greenaway Quotes

Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.

I can't be interesting, controversial, and the writer I'd like to be if I need everybody to like me and think I'm doing the right thing, because those two things, in my experience, never go hand in hand.

All political movements are basically anti-creative - since a political movement is a form of war. "There's no place for impractical dreamers around here," that's what they always say. "Your writing activities will be directed, kindly stop horsing around." "As for the smoking of marijuana, it is the exploitation for the workers." Both favor alcohol and are against pot.

There are things that I love in Iranian cinema and things that I don't. In Iranian cinema, you have to use metaphor because you are living under a dictatorship.

To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination.

Obviously I don't want to make a film that offends people, but the whole world is so politically correct - I'm not going to not do something because it may be politically incorrect. At some point, the metaphors and allegories break down. They disappear, and you just have science fiction.

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

It is almost impossible to reconcile self expression with the creative act.

Before, I'd photograph anything. I didn't think there was anything more or less obscene about any part of the body.

All good art is an indiscretion.

Poetry is respected only in this country [Russia.] There is no place where more people are killed for it.

When despots rule, cartoonists die.

A writer who will not lie cannot live or work under Fascism

I will not last 6 months in this town because I am going to say what I damn well please.

I think, in big-budget movies where everything seems so poured over and restricted and the studio wants to examine every frame to make sure it's vetted properly, you lose a little bit of playfulness.

Bashar al-Assad's henchmen stomped on the hands of famed Syrian cartoonist Ali Farzat. Our dictators tailor wounds to suit their victims' occupations.

I would love to just write and not have everything I say or do turn into a political battle.

Under Stalin, artists weren't dissidents; all they hoped was to survive and write.

As there is in Germany - as well as in Russia and Italy - no art which is not approved of by the government, any criticizing remark about the present policy made by me would easily be taken as a hostile act. I cannot have my name put up against an official report from Germany without risking very unpleasant consequences.

Heart is tied with a lot of controversies, a lot of heartbreaks in show business. With 'Love Marie' who I really am in the real world. I feel more free, I feel more clean. I feel like people don't judge me, and that is why I shy away from being Heart when it comes to my painting.

The fact that we don't have censorship on the Internet really gives you a lot of freedom, as makers and creative people do what they believe in.

Even if censorship might encourage creative ways to circumvent it, it still slows down progress and our ability to realise our full creative potential. And that is why I vehemently fight against it.

When demagogues and dictators ban art, this is the reason: art is the great solvent of obedient fundamentalism.

As a director and a creative person, I can say banning anything is wrong.

It also signals to me, when I pick up a pencil, that this is a rough draft. This is not going anywhere, and no one's going to see it. You have permission to make all the mistakes you want. It signals freedom to me, and it signals mistakes.