Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You have to think of your brand as a kind of myth. A myth is a compelling story that is archetypal, if you know the teachings of Carl Jung. It has to have emotional content and all the themes of a great story: mystery, magic, adventure, intrigue, conflicts, contradiction, paradox.
Some novels present a story form many points of view. Most movies tell only one person's side of the story. Sometime it's easy to use the strongest point of view, or find the character with the most dramatic experience. It depends on which themes the scriptwriter wants to explore.
You never make all things for all people and can't always pander to the broadest denominator. I keep an eye toward doing the themes that interest me. Do they move me? Interest me? Make me think? When I run across something that is provocative in an unsettling way, it appeals to me.
We're definitely still interested in the Avatar/Korra universe and fantastical world building in general, but I think many of the core themes and tones found in our two kids' series would be present as well in any sort of adult dramas we might be lucky enough to make in the future.
I think one of the primary themes in my work is the paradox of memory, at once fundamental to our sense of who we are and yet elusive, ever-changing, fragmentary. One way to look at this is to say that, therefore, we ourselves are elusive, ever-changing and fragmentary to ourselves.
Well, I never got into the young adult headspace. With 'Twilight,' they are pretty adult themes, aside from maybe the first one, but even that. They're very adult themes, actually, particularly as the characters age. I never wrote for young adults. I wrote for myself, as an audience.
I think vampires are different from human beings, but they're sentenced to eternity on this planet. They have the same confusion about love and permanence, integrity, and denial. These qualities really are the same in vampire characters as in humans. I think they're universal themes.
'Hill St.' was very good, but it was very impersonal work for me. I wrote about that place as if I was a visitor. It wasn't what my life was like. It was a great place to learn the craft of how to shape a scene, but I wanted a chance to write about more personal themes and obsessions.
When I wrote 'Southern Baptist Sissies,' that was the first time that I really ventured out into pure drama with themes where there was not one laugh sometimes. But I've always gravitated organically to blending tones and usually get good reviews about that. That's what life is about.
Imagining themes that are specific to coating lines, shapes, shades, thoughts, the decoration of our homes and the objects of utility or pure pleasure, adapting its purpose in a material-specific way to metal or wood, marble or fabric - it is, without any doubt, an absorbing occupation.
Even in the Pixar and DreamWorks animated movies, there are themes that could be taken into an adult area very easily. 'Zootopia,' I think, is the closest so far; I love that movie because they really did push the envelope as far as the ideas and writing of an animated film for families.
I'm always writing something. I've got so much stuff, I don't know what to do with it. Some of it will be Strokes, some of it will be I don't know what - stuff for pop singers. TV themes. I've got a jar stuffed with songs, all these ideas that are just me humming into a recording device.
In my books the technology that I choose to talk about has to serve the themes. What that means is that I end up having to cut out a lot of cool technology that would be really fun to describe and play with, but which would just confuse everybody. So in 'Amped,' I focus on neural implants.
Along the way I have been able to choose some themes which ask questions - not necessarily force a message on anyone, but at least invite the audience to question things: jury service, dignity in dying, Ireland - and not least because they force me to ask myself questions. Where do I stand?
I did a cake for the 60th birthday of Elton John, for Britney Spears' 27th birthday and for the 'Circus' album she put out - the cake had circus themes. I prepared a cake for a surprise 82nd birthday event for the architect Frank Gehry; the cake was comprised of mini-replicas of his buildings.
The idea of the museum is to show my work since the start, and I wanted to show all of it, not just to choose between different pieces. They are grouped together in themes - minimalism, androgyny, black and white, graphic, flowers, and so on - from the earliest designs to the most recent ones.
Ted Geisel was trying to make a statement about awareness and personal responsibility. He was very clear about that. But the ideas and themes in 'The Lorax' go beyond a love of trees. It's also a story about the dangers of greed and the power of redemption. That's what makes it a timeless tale.
Yes, I've heard of the 'Mad Men' comparisons, but I like to think 'The Hour' has its own distinctive voice. Although it is set in 1956, I have tried to give it a contemporary edge, and its themes of love, passion, romance, fury, professional jealousy, and personal failure are universal, I think.
Writing for children, you do bear a responsibility to not include overt or graphic adult content that they are not ready for and don't need, or to address adult concepts or themes from an oblique angle or a child's limited viewpoint, with appropriate context, without being graphic or distressing.
The SF genre, of course, is really an organically evolved, marketplace-determined, idiosyncratic grab bag of themes and signifiers and characters and icons and gadgets, some of which hew to the realistic parameters and paradigms embraced by science, others of which partake more of fantasy and magic.
I was the Playmate editor for 'Playboy' for two years. I produced two years' worth of centerfolds. I did everything on that, from picking the girls to designing the sets to picking the wardrobe, coming up with themes, assigning the photographer, down to editing the photos and approving the retouching.
'Filk' is the folk music of the science fiction and fantasy community - you get parodies, you get traditional music that's had the words slightly modified, and you'll also get just original works that have been written about science fiction and fantasy works, or with science fiction and fantasy themes.
Like Rodgers and Hammerstein, I'm not afraid to deal with themes about the ups and downs of life, yet which are still entertaining, and you still feel these stories.
Films with fresh themes and able directors are a pleasure to associate yourself with.
What I love with 'Game of Thrones' is, every season, I get to continue to develop the existing themes; every season, I also get to write new themes.
I think as the largest democracy in the world, we have self-conscious filmmakers who can handle sensitive themes.
I'm no songwriter because all of my popular songs have just been outgrowths of themes for the various pictures.
In the future, I would like to do more films with contemporary themes. Perhaps comedy, which is something I have done in theater but not in cinema.
In my family history, there are generations of women who were abandoned by men. It's one of the themes of my family.
In almost all my work, I try to re-invent Christian images and stories and themes. You'd be amazed by the letters I get from young Christians who recognise this and enjoy it.
Sam Peckinpah's movies probably say more about him than anybody's body of work says about that person. There are running themes in his films that I find eminently fascinating, disturbing, exhausting, and exhilarating.
We grew up as kids watching those movies and we were exposed to themes of civil rights, unfairness, bigotry and fathers struggling against the kind of mob of the town, so you remember how you felt as a kid being taken seriously, that you are part of the human drama.
The themes in 'Violet' are universal: accepting yourself with all of your flaws, moving on, and the forgiveness and freedom that comes along with that.
I don't think it's possible to separate out the strands of a writer's history, circumstances, life events, and that writer's themes.
In 'Ratatouille,' there are two different themes that express the two sides of Remy's personality: the creative side: the chef, and the 'thief' side: his nature as a mouse.
I believe there are aspects of the narrative that become easier to understand by shifting the focus of the story to the characters. Illustrating growth and change in the protagonist becomes a simpler process, and these changes are, in fact, one of the themes of 'Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice''s story.
One of the struggles that I have with classical music is the way one thinks about a recapitulation. There's always this idea of themes, and I have trouble with that.
I think if you look at the themes that are presented in the film, some are inherently social, and I think that any film which deals with the family is dealing with the smallest social unit in our society - and in a sense it is a question of scope.
Is it good, bad, or neutral to recognize thematic patterns in your own work? When it comes to recurring themes, I'm of the mind that knowledge is probably not power, at least in terms of the work.
When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer.
In general, the main themes emerge early for each book, even before the storyline and characters, as I research the time and place I want to draw upon. Having said that, every single book so far has offered me surprises en route, and these include motifs that come forward as I am writing.
But I'm a fairly mechanical worker - I tend not to think about themes so much as plot. I want to get the feeling right. If it's moving through tunnels, I ask myself, what is it like to move through tunnels?
Many times, the way I write my themes or melodies is that I hear it, and then I sing into my phone or something, or I'll scribble down on a piece of paper.
As a screen composer or film-music writer, I need something that I can work with in the body of the score. Like 'Charade,' 'Moon River,' 'Wine and Roses,' 'Dear Heart' - they were all just themes that grew out of the picture.
We write in ways that, we generally hope, reflect real life, or at least look familiar to humans. And in life, recurring themes are a recurring theme. We never quite conquer a pet vice or a relationship pattern or a communication habit. We're haunted by our particular demons.
My task is to tell a story with the music. I always like to have themes in terms of characters or plots, and things that can tell a story always interest me the most.
I think a melody is a melody. And the way I usually start is I start writing my themes without even writing to picture to just try to find the tone for the movie or the TV show.
In 'Westworld,' I really got to explore new areas, stylistically. We had the Indian world, we had Shogun world, so I got to play with new instrumentation - and also, a lot of new themes.
I like to have recognizable themes and sounds that really connect to the project and that you can identify with that particular project. My goal is always, 'When that theme comes on - even if you're not in the room - you hear it and say, 'Oh my show is starting, I gotta watch.'
There's been a great development with scale on TV, but my approach is always the same across projects, whether it's a video game, a movie, or a TV show: I always try to set up my sounds and my themes. I really try to stay with the characters and do the storytelling through the music.