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.

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.

You don’t become a teacher to make a world of money. You become a teacher to make a world of difference.

It's all about concentration and repetition. That's all it is.

I was growing, so I had to scrunch my feet up. Now people are like: "Why do you have so many shoes." I jump at the fact that I can wear something new everyday.

I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory.

American history is not something dead and over. It is always alive,always growing, always unfinished.

The fact is I'm very self-similar.

I must say that acting was good training for the political life that lay ahead of us.

Shouldn't the commandments be re-written? No, they should be re-read!

You have to have a somewhat cold heart to be a writer.

Our contention has always been that Shakespeare is our greatest living author. If he can survive a season on Broadway, he must be.