Peter Greenaway Quotes

Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time.

Sometimes if the point of a piece of music is to open a conversation with other people, it's really hard to open that conversation if you're telling people exactly what to do or feel or think.

That's what independent filmmaking does: it gives the underdog a voice, a shot.

I like my music to transport people somewhere.

That's the cool thing that music can do: make you feel this or that way. That's all I've ever wanted to achieve - I'm a music guy, you know? That's my occupation.

When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.

Music is an emotional experience, and that is what imprints itself on the soul.

That is the responsibility of the artist, of the actor, to inhabit these roles and put on somebody else's shoes. It's the responsibility and the gift of what it is I get the opportunity to do.

A literary work can only be received through symbols, through concepts - for that is what words are; but cinema, like music, allows for utterly direct, emotional, sensuous perception of the work.

When I create music, the feeling that you get... I get first. You [the listener] have a delayed experience with the feeling I initially get when I have a creative insight. Not just the voice, but all the creativity - the production, the idea, the concept, the music involved. There is a high. There is an emotional experience that happens when everything comes together... I made music as consistently as I did, especially back in the day, because it made me feel so good... When everything is on, it's a wonderful feeling.

We seem to know when to 'tap the heart.' Others have hit the intellect. We can hit them in all emotional way. Those who appeal to the intellect only appeal to a very limited group. The real thing behind this is: we are in the motion picture business, only we are drawing them instead of photographing them.

The work I care about is terribly simple. I observe. I try to entertain. But above all I want my pictures to be emotional. Little else interests me in photography.

Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation.

You look at somebody's work as an actor and you can see their emotional life being fed into it and you can kind of feel them through it.

I suppose expectations are strange and I shy away from them. And the whole point of being an actor is to connect.

My real motivation came from my desire for music videos to have the same equal soul-touching emotional resonance that straight music does.

I love music. I do play. It's like mathematics, and it's also emotional. It's nice to play, for no other reason than just to play.

Music is a language of emotion. I'm passionate about it because I think it's the most direct way to connect to the things that are ineffable. Words just aren't necessary a good enough opportunity to express. Words are maybe less than accessible at expressing.

Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.

I guess the most emotional part is when I have that moment when I end up writing something that I really, really love. So not only is there the emotional connection with the music that's being created, but there's also the magic of the fact that you're essentially creating something from nothing.

Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril

In order to reinvent yourself, you have to dig deep and look at yourself. I'd lost my way creatively, and I was humbled, and so I think I got really basic about wanting to depict people in the ways that I find them amazing and funny and emotional and that I can relate to and do from an instinctive, gut place. People trying to survive ... That's what all my movies are about.

I love this idea of being able to touch people with something quite familiar, something quite emotional, and at the same time, have the feeling that this is a new way of doing it, a fresh way of showing things. I like radical people. At the same time, I'm fascinated by popularity, people who were able to have huge success and also keep their consistency.

It is not the style but the quality and emotional impact of work that makes it marketable. Unless we make art that connects with people, we won't sell much, no matter what the style or subject.

Sometimes you're working in highly emotional scenes and you'll get lost in the moment. You're having fun with your friend at work. It's an opportunity to give to them as much as they've given back to you.