Peter Greenaway on Writing

"You can't write. That's not writing. It's scribbling. Distasteful scribbling. Why can't you write properly?"

"Perhaps. I need writing. Don't ask me why -- just take out your pen and write your name on my arm -- go on."

"It's precisely on the Internet that the majority of the writing is terribly bad and uninteresting."

"Imagine a world where nothing is stable. In the West, we have three moving elements -- Air, Fire, Water -- but at least we can depend on the fourth."

"This is where I begin to do the writing. I am now going to be the pen and not the paper."

"The word for smoke should look like smoke -- the word for rain should look like rain..."

"I was completely absorbed as to what would happen because anything was possible."

"Cinema: An illusion that can only satisfactorily happen in the dark."

"Now you've opened your mouth, do you expect me to lose interest?"

"The letters Z, O and O dominate the front entrance gates of a capital city zoo. They are made of glass and they tower up two giraffes high. They are the width of one elephant and the colour of bottled blue ink."

"Whispering can be a rest from a noisy world of words."

"The pretence that numbers are not the humble creation of man, but are the exacting language of the Universe and therefore possess the secret of all things, is comforting, terrifying and mesmeric."

"Words reproduce themselves pleasurably too."

"A hand cannot write on itself."

"His writing -- in so many languages -- made me a sign-post pointing east, west, north and south. I had shoes in German, stockings in French, gloves in Hebrew, a hat with a veil in Italian. He only kept me naked where I was most accustomed to wearing clothes."

"Now, at this very minute, another thing is happening which we cannot hear because most paintings do not have a sound-track. Peter is inventing the word "simony" to explain ecclesiastical purchase-power, for which, since his Church later exercised it so expertly, Simon Magus ought to be revered as a patron not a rogue."