I wouldn't wish the eighties on anyone, it was the time when all that was rotten bubbled to the surface. If you were not at the receiving end of this mayhem you could be unaware of it.

I'm not afraid of death but I am afraid of dying. Pain can be alleviated by morphine but the pain of social ostracism cannot be taken away.

Violet has the shortest wavelength of the spectrum. Behind it, the invisible ultraviolet. Roses are Red, Violets are Blue. Poor violet, violated for a rhyme.

Red protects itself. No colour is as territorial. It stakes a claim, is on the alert against the spectrum.

The Last Of England works with image and sound, a language which is nearer to poetry than prose. It tells its story quite happily in silent images, in contrast to a word-bound cinema.

All men are homosexual, some turn straight. It must be very odd to be a straight man because your sexuality is hopelessly defensive. It's like an ideal of racial purity.

Oh how Shakespeare would have loved cinema!

People say to me, "You make fantastic films" and I say, "No, I make documentaries.

I want the world to be filled with white fluffy duckies

If Gucci handbags were still in fashion Greenaway would carry his scripts in them.

I'm not afraid of death but I am afraid of dying.

Some pains are physical, and some pains are mental, but the one that's both is dental.

P33- Oppression is domesticating. Gravest obstacle to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings consciousness.

The longer I look at something, the more my imagination churns and I can find somewhere to put it.

However beautifully you play the violin, you can always play the violin even more beautifully again.

He plants to benefit another generation.

The moon is bleached as white as wool, And just dropping under; Every star is gone but three, And they hang far asunder,-- There's a sea-ghost all in gray, A tall shape of wonder!

My family was always present when I needed them and sometimes felt even stronger emotions than me.

The Irish are never at peace but when they're fighting.

A lot of things in 'Parents' I find very truthful.

At the end of the day, it's about the reader's attachment to and belief in the magical elements that make or break magical realism.