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

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!

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.

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.

The bulk of my input comes from my peers.

I've never taken any classes or had formal training in writing novels. At its most basic, I learned how to structure a novel.

I am the world's worst salesman, therefore, I must make it easy for people to buy.

You have to pick the right tool for the point you're trying to make and there is no one solution.

It seems to me that a man who can think straight along for forty-seven years without changing a single idea ought to be kept in a cabinet as a curiosity.

The sky had never seemed so sky; the world had never seemed so world.

I love splashing the blood around.

Iowans know themselves and what they are doing. They are doing well.

When you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It's only painful and difficult for others. The same applies when you are stupid.

You can't dream unless you know what the possibilities are.