A Quote by Peter Greenaway

An American critic wrote that she would rather be forced to read the New York telephone directory three times than watch the film A Zed and Two Noughts, a third of which was a homage to Vermeer. Conceivably, if you are a list-enthusiast like me, the New York telephone directory might be fascinating, demographically, geographically, historically, typographically, cartographically; but I am sure no compliment was intended.

Peter Greenaway

Quote Topics

Am American Compliment Critic Directory Enthusiast Fascinating Film Forced Historically Homage Intended Like Like Me List Me Might New New York Rather Read She Sure Telephone Than Third Three Three Times Times Two Vermeer Watch Which Would Wrote York

Quote Author

Peter Greenaway
British - Director
Born: April 5, 1942

[Reviewing the New York City Telephone Directory] But it is the opinion of the present reviewer that the weakness of plot is due to the great number of characters which clutter up the pages. The Russian school is responsible for this.

Robert Benchley

We live in a modest system, a galaxy called the Milky Way. If we named every star in the Milky Way and put them in the Hollywood telephone directory and stacked those telephone directories up, we'd have a pile of telephone directories 70 miles high.

John Rhys-Davies

I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

A new biography of Madonna came out last week, and apparently the biography lists all the men she's slept with. The book is apparently called the Manhattan Telephone Directory.

Bill Maher

Elizabeth Taylor has more chins than the Chinese telephone directory.

Joan Rivers

Everything I learned and didn't do in New York I would put into place here in the London West Hollywood. It's fascinating, when you look at the critics' reviews, and we had a great one in the New York Observer and all that, and then the New York Times came and it was a devastation; two stars out of four. They said that I played safe because it wasn't fireworks. Then they judged the persona over the substance that was on the plate.

Gordon Ramsay

I would sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

Recording 'Tusk' was quite absurd. The studio contract rider for refreshments was like a telephone directory.

Christine McVie

Success is when your name is in everything but the telephone directory.

Sam Ewing

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.

E. B. White

I'm drawn to write about upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer might have recurring dreams. My childhood and girlhood were spent in upstate New York, in the country north of Buffalo and West of Rochester. So this part of New York state is very familiar to me and, with its economic difficulties, has become emblematic of much of American life.

Joyce Carol Oates

The New York Times will tell you what is going on in Afghanistan or the Horn of Africa. But it is no exaggeration that The New York Times has more people in India than they have in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is a borough of two million people. They're not a Bloomingdale's people, not trendy, sophisticated, the quiche and Volvo set. The New York Times does not serve those people.

Edwin Diamond

I have friends in New York that won't leave New York, and they're really talented people, but they'd rather take an acting class in New York than do a play in Florida or Boston. That's just weird to me, but they get into that I've-got-to-be-in-the-center-of-the-universe mentality. I'm not that way.

Robert Englund

I follow my own nose. So I read things that are different. People will always say to me, "Have you read Robert S. Bosco's latest novel?" or "Have you read so and so's history of Peru, which is reviewed in the New York Review of Books and the New York Times and has a buzz about it?" I don't even know what you're talking about. I'm like from another planet. I'm a pygmy from the jungle.

Mark Helprin

I always give respect to and pay homage to New York, because I don't feel like I would be the player that I am today if it wasn't for New York City. It gives you a certain edge, a certain toughness just growing up in the city.