“Rain is also very difficult to film, particularly in Ireland because it’s quite fine.”

It doesn’t matter what the technology is – no one will watch a Peter Greenaway film anyway.

Well, if you ask any filmmaker how they got into it, everyone came a different route.

So fine that the Irish don’t even acknowledge that it exists.

If you’d been where I’d been… if you’d seen the things I’d seen!… you… you’d be me… Or someone following me around.

Have a go. Anybody can do it.

I was once described by one of my critics as an aesthetic fascist.

I’m a pluralist. I’ve always argued that as many different films as possible should be made.

A Great Movie Evolves when Everybody Has the Same Vision in Their Heads.

The films that I do tend to polarise people’s views.

I’ve always been completely autocratic. I’ve never learned to be diplomatic or democratic.

Personally I am very much against the death penalty for several reasons.

Most directors have little lists in their heads of people they really want to work with.

Film-making is a physically hard job.

I always argued against the auteur theory; films are a collaborative art form.

I turn on the TV sometimes, start watching something and think.

A lot of directors prefer the solitude of the editing process, but I revel in the craziness of what a film set is.

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.

Honestly, if the worst these people can say about me is that I’m gay, then I think I’ll be fine. I can handle it.

I remember my first test in F1. After five laps, I came back to the pits and tried to play it cool – ‘Oh yeah, I’m fine, I’m on top of this’ – but I was completely lost.

The fine, hair-like rootlets at the bottom and the microscopical cells of the leaves at the top.

You do that and you go through some withdrawals in the beginning. You start thinking, ‘Oh, do I need to do this? Do I need to do that?’ You forget that we were doing just fine with the payphone.

It was fine for my Polish Ashkenazi forebears to live on dumplings and potatoes, because they laboured in the fields. But that diet is unsuitable for an urban lifestyle.

Mother, she likes the blue material just fine.

I’ve never been one to look up the ladder. I’ve always looked down the ladder. As long as there’s one guy down there, I’m fine.