Peter Greenaway Quotes

As a cinematographer, I was always attracted to stories that have the potential to be told with as few words as possible.

The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words.

The visual architecture of 'Biutiful' is the most sophisticated of all the films I have directed.

A close-up on screen can say all a song can.

It's too bad for us 'literary' enthusiasts, but it's the truth nevertheless - pictures tell any story more effectively than words.

Film is not literature - the image on screen is the information you get.

So I like to try to go back and develop pure visual storytelling. Because to me, it's one of the most exciting aspects of making movies and almost a lost art at this point.

I think there's a connection with 'Nightcrawler' and 'Blowup' and other films where visual imagery is integral to the story. It allows you to play with images.

I love telling stories with images. But I think there's more to just saying a movie is great visually.

I've never made a film using dialogue or speech.

Everything I try to do wants to be able to push communication through the notion of the visual image.

I find movies rely upon dialogue too much sometimes, and you lose the power of what really the most basic cinematic language is, which is the visual language.

For me, I'm not a great wordsmith, and so maybe from lack of great dialogue writing, I thought it's easier and better to express a story through visuals.

Most screenplays, most motion pictures, owe much more to the screenplay. Ingmar Bergman has such an economy of language, so little language in his piece, it is so visual, his moods are introduced and buttressed by camera rather than by word or character. But again, that's unique.

Image plays a huge part in my music and in my lifestyle.

What I am really curious about is the visuals of cinema... the form.

Mirrors are the essence of movies.

Sometimes we misunderstand what films can do. We just throw a whole book in there, with people just talking, talking, and talking. The picture can tell, the frame can tell.

I made several short films with very little dialogue. I'm still not a fan of talking heads. My stories are told with images as much as possible.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

One picture is worth a thousand words.

“One picture is worth a thousand words,” said an ancient Chinese; but it may take ten thousand words to validate it.

Writers would hate me saying this, and I love words, but I have to say that cinema exists, on one level, for the power of the big image and what that image does.

Film is anti-language.