Peter Greenaway

"That's just the sort of remark you would make -- you'd just be intent on whipping it in, whipping it out, and wiping it on your jacket! Look at your jacket! Looks like a pig field! Your nails could do with a clean. Show me your nails! God! Why can't I have some bloody quality in my associates?"

"I like a lot of glasses about -- it highers the tone."

"Take Mitchel here -- no -- on second thoughts -- don't -- because he's a crude little bugger."

"Georgie doesn't like babies do you Georgie? Some days, Georgie, I think you behave like a bloke."

"What days are those Albert? And what's it like?"

"I've just been reading -- stuff to make your hair curl -- you go in that toilet -- that's the sort of stuff people read -- not this sort of thing -- don't you feel out of touch? Does this stuff make money? I bet you're the only person to have read this book -- but I bet you every man in this restaurant has had a read of that stuff in there... makes you think, doesn't it?"

"I once saw a film where the main character didn't speak for the first half hour."

"… like us? Counting up the minutes -- have we spent half an hour together?"

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

"...and then?"

"He spoilt it -- he spoke."

"… and within five minutes I'd lost interest."

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

"It was only a film."

"Have you read all of them?"

"No -- it's not necessary for a bookkeeper to read all the stock."

"How safe are we here?"

"Does Albert read?"

"No. If you don't read, are you safe?"

"Only from bad books."

"You could spend a lifetime reading in here."

"Two lifetimes -- yours and mine."

"What good are all these books to you? You can't eat them! How can they make you happy?"

"I have always found them very reasonable --they don't change their minds when you aren't looking at them. Each one can always be relied upon to say the same thing."

"That sounds like a disadvantage."

"What is your favorite book?"

"French Cuisine. By Guillaume Rosart. Publisher Henri Simonel. In 1950 it cost me twenty francs -- about 2 pounds -- about 15 pounds now."

"What's so special about it?"

"It tells you how to boil water. What expression to wear when you are eating eggs. How to starve. When to eat. What your first meal should be. What your last meal should be. It says more about death than eating and more about living than cooking."

"It's strange. In the last five minutes you have used my Christian name over and over again and never before. People I like learn my name too late."

"What do you mean -- Happy anniversary? It's not my birthday."

""No -- that's true. But it's an anniversary I shall always celebrate I shall always celebrate even if you won't. And you won't."

"No Albert -- it's not God -- it's Michael. My lover. You vowed you would kill him -- and you did. And you vowed you would eat him. Now eat him."

"The whole of this studio is bonded; that is to say, we are not officially in Japan per se, but rather, in what is considered for these purposes an adjunct of the customs shed at Narita airport. Officially, we are not here because we are pornographic. It's a rather curious situation."

"And I've also written a play called Miranda, about what happens afterwards on the ship on the way home. It's about what happens to innocence and how it has to be destroyed."

"Gonzalo threw many books into the bottom of the leaky vessel that took Prospero out on to the sea away from Italy and Europe into exile. Shakespeare does not, of course, elaborate what these volumes were. Prospero's Books speculates. There would need perhaps to be books on navigation and survival, there would need to be books for an elderly scholar to learn how to rear and educate a young daughter, how to colonise an island, farm it, subjugate its inhabitants, identify its plants and husband its wild beasts. There would need to be books to offer solace and advise patience and put past glory and present despondency into perspective. There would need to be books to encourage revenge."

"Prospero's power is held in his relationship to his books, and The Tempest is witness to more than a few apparently conflicting facets of his personality -- not all of them particularly praiseworthy. What was it, in those books, that made Prospero not only powerful but also a moralising schold and a petty revenger, a benevolent despote, a jealous father and also a master designer of song and dance? Are we truly the product of what we read?"

"At once, far off... begins a rumbling, droning noise -- like a thousand distant flying machines -- like the sound of an armada of mechanical birds -- a noise reminiscent of implacable, massive stage machinery in a masque or pageant that is several streets away. It is not one sound but many sounds combined. This is the sound of Prospero's magic."

"Prospero wears a large, heavy, dark-blue cloak or gown that enfolds him like a quilted blanket... it is darkly embroidered with small wine-coloured beads and swirls of black vegetation... it has long strings and ornate tassels that trail to the ground... it is a garment that has often been worn... a little frayed and scuffed. Later it will be seen to be capable of changing colour... in seven stages comparable to the power of Prospero's magic... black, brown, dark blue, light blue, purple, dark red and fiery red... and to have a vivid lining embroidered with dazzling stars -- a lining that is only revealed in flashes as when a dark butterfly momentarily uncovers coloured underwings."

"Later this device of mirror and mirror-carriers will be developed and many changes rung from its possibilities."

"Prospero has always felt most at ease in a study, surrounded by books."

"The world is in his cloak -- figures peer out of its folds -- mythological figures and snakes and pigs and flowers, naked fauns and heavy-breasted sirens and horses' heads -- they sprawl on the flagstones at his feet and peep out from under his arms..."

"Four handsome, naked, female dancers separate themselves from the crowd in Prospero's cloak... and they dance. From now on -- they become Prospero's dancers -- they mark out a four-figured symmetrical space around him -- dancing in perfect unison -- a strange, prancing, high-stepping, complicated, frankly sensuous dance -- danced with great firmness and confidence -- their eroticism is aimed only at themselves -- no mincing or quarter given -- their erotic confidence is demonstrative and challenging."

"The moods of the dark night skies are variously represented like soft black velvet, like the shining black of a scarab beetle, like the patina-ed surface of Indian-inked paper, soft blotting-paper soaked in dark blue ink for forty days, like a black cat's fur shining in moonlight..."

"It is Vesalius' Anatomy of Birth -- a book of drawings and diagrams of human anatomy. Beautiful drawings but -- as the pages turn -- terrible in their frankness..."

"A woman materialises behind Prospero -- leaning lightly on the back of his chair -- she is alternately a Titianesque nude and then the Vesalius figure -- flayed … she leans lightly over and kisses Prospero on the cheek. The kiss leaves a blood-red mark on his withered cheek. Prospero shivers."

"We wait -- it seems for minutes -- looking at the night sky. Then, suddenly breaking the silence and making us start with alarm and fear... there is a savage, heart-rending, gurgling scream."

"Book #8: The Vesalius Anatomy of Birth. As it hits the water, it screams and spurts blood like a pierced heart -- as it sinks, there is a suggestion of entrails."

"Book #10: A Book of Travellers' Tales. As it hits the water its pages detach themselves from the covers, which sink... and the pages form themselves into small paper boats that float away on the tide."

"It seems to me that the comprehension and enjoyment of the reader, as opposed to the viewer, is best served in printing this version rather than a slavish definitive transcription. Besides, what film is truly definitive? By the time you see the film it may very well be sub-titled, re-edited, shortened, even censored, and every film is viewed at the discretion of the projectionist, the cinema manager, the architect of the cinema, the comfort of your seat and the attention of your neighbour."