Peter Greenaway Quotes

To the extent that independent means you're willing to attempt to put your own ideas, personality, and commitment to the material on screen, then of course I hope I'm independent until the day I die.

If you take the time and put in the effort to write your own material and absolutely refuse to be denied the right to make your film it is difficult whatever colour you are.

I came to filmmaking because it's my passion. I decided I can't have it distorted or marred by someone else deciding what it should be.

I've never been one to sit back and go, 'I'd better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don't want to lose them.'

I don't do any art to please any people.

I make pop music, but I do it on my own terms. I'll never play the game, so to speak, just for success. I'll always follow my heart and make the music I want to make.

The rule I stand by as an artist is definitely be yourself, and don't make music just for other people: make it for you first.

I think it's helpful to aspire to make films if you feel that other people are not doing what you want to do.

No matter what I put out, no matter what genre - because I feel like I'm going to experiment with everything - I hope people will see that it's true to me, that it's honest, and nobody ever thinks that I'm inauthentic.

Everybody's out trying to be commercial. I'm not trying to be anything, really.

I really approached the film as if it was a white big piece of paper and I was going to draw a picture on it. And whether that picture was good or bad, whatever people thought of it, what they could never take away was that it was my picture.

I paint what I see and not what others like to see.

If I can't make the kind of film that I want to make, then the hell with it.

Assimilate all you can from tradition and then say things in your own way.

A film should be somewhat personal. I think that whatever you create you have to be true to yourself and create something that feels right to you.

A song can be a song where somebody thinks you're crazy. A song that gets released has got to be something that everyone can relate to. Most of the songs that I keep are un-relateable for most people - some of the music I make only for myself and the homies.

It's exciting to watch people do and write and say what they feel like doing, writing and saying.

My life is not a political campaign. I just write about what is on my mind. I just play whatever I feel like playing. Whatever is in my soul at the time is what I want to do. I have, thank god, enough people who are still interested in what I am doing so that I can go out and keep doing it.

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

I want to make music that I like; not something that I have to make because I think it's going to sell.

What's the point if you make something that's not you, and you're successful? You have to perform it the rest of your life.

I'm my own artist, and I see artists as movies. No one should try to change them for anything. If you don't like it, you just don't follow it. And if you don't like a movie you don't watch it. Watch another movie.

I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of how I should have done it.

My style is all to myself.

I used to get in trouble with my old agent, because I've never been driven by fear or need or greed. I want my work to represent me as a person, so I can be quite fussy.