Peter Greenaway Quotes

The value of writing about art is its effect on the imagination. Paintings allow us to inhabit another culture, place, and time period, and address the issues of those time periods that resonate with our own time.

The claims I'm making for art are simply the claims that we naturally make around music or around poetry. We're much more relaxed around those art forms. We're willing to ask, 'How could this find a place in my heart?'

We want people to experience art and think about it. The art reflects our time, it is about our culture.

I believe that true art is universal in its appeal.

I don't think the audience goes and thinks of the movie as a piece of art - there are some independent people who may go and have a higher appreciation for filmmaking. It is a great art form, but I don't think you look at a painting and a movie with the same eye.

Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

Queen Victoria did not regard art, letters, or music as in any way springing from national character: they were something quite apart, elegant decorations resembling a scarf or a bracelet, and in no way expressive of the soul of the country.

Poetry's always dead, you know? You don't realize how good poetry is until 15 years later.

I do believe that movies are subject to a million interpretations.

What makes people the world over stand in line for Van Gogh is not that they will see beautiful pictures but that in an indefinable way they will come away feeling better human beings. And that is exactly what Van Gogh hoped for.

Variety is more than a means of avoiding boredom, since art is more than an entertainment of the senses.

Great art should be shown with great excitement.

I've seen 'Babel' four times. And each time I realize anew what a monumental project that had been for me.

I love the novel of 'The English Patient'; I think it's a profoundly beautiful novel. I love the movie of 'The English Patient'; I think it's a profoundly beautiful movie. And they're totally different. You accept each on its own terms, and that's kind of the ideal.

I admire 'Adventure Time' for being a piece of art in the way that I think art should be. If you want to see it is poetry, you can, and if you don't, you can watch a fun cartoon.

I think you learn a lot about a country from its art. To me, it's part of the drama of life. It teaches you that there are places, moments and incidents in other cultures that genuinely have a life of their own.

If you are great, 'El Topo' is a great picture. If you are limited, 'El Topo' is limited.

Anything that reflects the human condition back on humans in the entertainment medium is art.

Every great film should seem new every time you see it.

In the finest critics one hears the full cry of the human. They tell one why it matters to read.

The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal.

Art evokes emotion. It doesn't have to be a thing of beauty.

I did love 'The Artist.' I've seen it four times, and every time I see it, it gets better and better.

Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.

Art is life's dream interpretation.