Top 100 Quotes About Themes
#1. You can access that on many levels and the human spirit and the human mind responds to those themes because they recognise the veracity of them. That they are real things. Sometimes it even goes beyond logic, it's just a sense of something.
Mel Gibson
#2. Every one of my novels could be entitled The Unbearable Lightness of Being or The Joke or Laughable Loves; the titles are interchangeable, they reflect the small number of themes that obsess me, define me, and unfortunately, restrict me. Beyond these themes, I have nothing else to say or write.
Milan Kundera
#3. The stories are there first, and they come from my experiences wandering around in the world. They will resonate into bigger things, forces sweeping the planet, themes and archetypes, but I'm not smart enough to have lucid integration of all that in my head as I'm writing.
Bob Shacochis
#4. Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it.
Pablo Picasso
#5. Of course, no lyrics are ever unintentional, but I think bands like Wolf Parade and the Arcade Fire have a tendency to touch on big themes without really following through on them or tying them in to a particular logic.
Dan Bejar
#6. The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.
George Orwell
#7. I've always had the wish, the nostalgia to be able to write detective novels. At heart, the principal themes of detective novels are close to the things that obsess me: disappearance, the problems of identity, amnesia, the return to an enigmatic past.
Patrick Modiano
#8. These are the themes in life which are consistent in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism - of being grounded in who you are and being engaged in an unjust world.
Cory Booker
#9. Most horror films fail to scare me. I think 'The Ring' plays more as a psychological thriller. It's smarter, there's more character development and some of the themes explored go a little deeper.
Martin Henderson
#10. I'm not thinking much about overall themes or preoccupations or anything like that. Instead I'm just trusting that, if I'm working hard, various notions and riffs and motifs and so on are very naturally suffusing the stories and the resulting book.
George Saunders
#11. One of my basic feelings is that the mind, and the heart alike, of the photographer must be dedicated to the glory, the magic, and the mystery of light. The mystery of time, the magic of light, the enigma of reality - and their interrelationships - are my constant themes and preoccupations.
Clarence John Laughlin
#12. There were some particular themes that I knew I wanted to hit, and when I got deeper into the project I found that it was becoming serious in and on its own. By the end, it's not very funny at all. I think, now, that part of the power of the book is that the jokes are kind of sparkly distractions.
Moshe Kasher
#13. Classical music's ability to translate emotional themes is fantastic.
Alan Price
#14. The body of work I create combines traditional storylines and postmodern narrative strategies to approach themes such as belonging, identity politics and conflict, as well as the push towards - and resistance against - modernization.
Aman Mojadidi
#15. 'Nowhere Man' embodies one of my favorite themes - the hero completely out of his element. It's really near and dear to my heart.
Ruth Glick
#16. There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.
Edgar Allan Poe
#17. I foresee no possibility of venturing into themes showing a closer view of reality for a long time to come. The public itself will not have it. What it wants is a gun and a girl.
D.W. Griffith
#19. I knew I wanted to write on religious themes when I was a GI in World War II. I saw and experienced so much violence that I thought I could express my outrage best with music.
Dave Brubeck
#20. I'll have a sentence in my head that's kind of beautiful and interesting, but I'm not sure why or where it's coming from. So it's kind of funny, because when people point out patterns or themes, it's the exact opposite of my film school experience.
Don Hertzfeldt
#21. Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.
David Bowie
#22. When I write I'm never really thinking about themes or the universal.
Lena Dunham
#23. What gets made that's considered for men - it's really just T&A stuff. It's not stuff than any guy I know really wants to watch, you know, the stuff with jiggling boobs and all that. Something with real sort of male themes and male strength and things I want to watch in a drama.
Edward Allen Bernero
#24. Learning" and "Performance" are key fundamental themes of better organizational governance.
Pearl Zhu
#25. Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus.
John Ortberg
#26. Life repeats Shakespearian themes more often than we think. Did Lady Macbeth, Richard III, and King Claudius exist only in the Middle Ages? Shylock wanted to cut a pound of flesh from the body of the merchant of Venice. Is that a fairy tale?
Varlam Shalamov
#27. I know the Bible pretty well. I'm not one of those guys who can immediately start quoting every book, but usually I know where to look to find certain themes.
John Darnielle
#28. I do not use the language of my people. I can take liberties with certain themes which the Arabic language would not allow me to take.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#29. The problem with themes is that writers don't realise they are themes until someone points them out.
Tobias Hill
#30. Purification and redemption are such recurrent themes in ritual because there is a clear and ubiquitous need for them: we all do regrettable things as a result of our own circumstances, and new rituals are frequently invented in response to new circumstances.
Susan Cain
#31. Throughout the ages, stories with certain basic themes have recurred over and over, in widely disparate cultures; emerging like the goddess Venus from the sea of our unconscious.
Joan D. Vinge
#32. I prefer to write books for children instead of reading them. But I do strongly believe in childhood and in respecting childhood innocence. I don't like books for children that deal with adult themes.
Philip Kerr
#33. All my books are about one major idea and two or three subsidiary ones. I have thought a lot about music when constructing books, and I like the way in music that themes come back.
Sebastian Faulks
#34. Themes recur again and again in my work.
Eve Arnold
#35. Capote, of course, addressed very similar themes to Good Night and Good Luck. Both films are about determined journalists defying obstacles in a relentless pursuit of the truth. Needless to say, both are period pieces.
Jon Stewart
#36. I think that one of the compelling themes of fiction is this confrontation between good and evil.
William Styron
#37. Film scores are often based on short themes, and it helps if you've got some way of developing these themes and making them sometimes last 4 minutes and sometimes last 40 seconds. One ends up doing it subconsciously.
Anne Dudley
#38. I think it's difficult to be honest about certain aspects of my work without acknowledging that I have experienced or felt or questioned certain of the themes in the books.
J.K. Rowling
#40. I wasn't writing stories with the intention of creating a particular collection. I simply wrote stories, and then discovered common themes among a good number of them.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
#41. Our touchstones of slavery are 'Song of the South,' 'Gone With the Wind' and 'The Birth of a Nation.' It's hard to separate the cinematic quality from the underlying themes. I appreciate the films, but the message was repugnant.
John Ridley
#42. I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there.
Iain Banks
#43. I love nothing better than a dirty cartoon. I think that it's really, really funny to see adult themes in a genre that's usually directed towards children.
John DiMaggio
#44. The forms art takes keep changing, but the themes remain the same.
Marty Rubin
#46. I don't really analyze my stuff when I write. I write about stuff that I'm interested in, that I'm feeling at that particular time. When I stand back and look at the complete work, I might see themes that run through the whole film, but I'm not really conscious of it when I'm doing it.
Spike Lee
#47. You know, a vampire book is not a book to be the vehicle for big themes and stuff, where sometimes when you're dealing with art or the life of Christ or the oeuvre of Shakespeare, you know, it's a little more ambitious.
Christopher Moore
#48. Since man, fragment of the universe, is governed by the same laws that preside over the heavens, it is by no means absurd to search there above for the themes of our lives, for those frigid sympathies that participate in our achievements as well as our blunderings.
Marguerite Yourcenar
#49. I don't really set out to explore grand themes. I set out to tell a story. And one I have to be able to imagine right through.
John Irving
#50. I do read some of the scripts from America and, even though the themes or subject of the film is very interesting, and some of the scenes are very interesting, there is a tendency that they have to explain everything. There will be no dilemma.
Mads Mikkelsen
#51. I don't think you can replaces great themes. But I think people do want to hear fresh arrangements of them. They don't want to hear them played the same way all the time.
Stan Kenton
#52. One of the goals of life is to try and be in touch with one's most personal themes-the values, the ideas, styles, colors that are the touchstones of one's own individual life, its real texture and substance.
Gloria Vanderbilt
#53. I can hear some of you groaning as you read this section. "Great," you're saying. "I have to put a theme in my book? Themes are only for that 'high literature' stuff that gets taught in universities, not for my nice, entertaining genre fiction.
Libbie Hawker
#54. In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shite fundamentalists.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#55. I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!
Tracy Chapman
#56. I consider myself a person like everyone else, and I take my time writing my records because I feel like it captures more of who I am. You have a much greater chance of hitting on themes and points ... that could play into someone else's life in a larger way.
Andrew McMahon
#57. If there's another thing that sportswriting teaches you, it is that there are no transcendent themes in life. In all cases things are here and they're over, and that has to be enough.
Richard Ford
#58. Themes only arise after a novel is written, and people begin to try to talk about it.
Rachel Kushner
#59. A lot of my writing comes from the themes of my life, and a lot of that stems from my faith. I also strive to be a light through which Christ can shine, whether it's through the way I dress, though my videos, or through my music.
Lindsey Stirling
#60. A dreamer of the common dreams, A fisher in familiar streams, He chased the transitory gleams That all pursue; But on his lips the eternal themes Again were new.
William Watson
#61. As an actor, I am meant to dabble with different themes and genres.
Sanjay Dutt
#62. It is a very beautiful story, 'The Crow.' It is a very tragic story with huge emotional themes.
Luke Evans
#63. I don't reinvent myself in any major way. It seems to be a slow evolution. I go back and visit certain themes that I feel strongly about and resonate with me emotionally.
James Taylor
#64. I don't want to deal with big, grand themes in my stories; art has nothing to do with themes. When you deal with themes, you are not creating; you are lecturing.
Tatyana Tolstaya
#65. Life stories with themes of ruin can trap us. Life stories that are triumphant can transform us.
Meg Jay
#66. I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.
Henry David Thoreau
#67. In the household in which I was raised, the themes were pretty simple. 'Work hard. Don't quit. Be appreciative, be thankful, be grateful, be respectful. Also, never whine, never complain. And always, for crying out loud, keep a sense of humor.'
Michael Keaton
#68. 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.
Melissa Rosenberg
#69. Drawing from art history and mythology allows me to connect with viewers in a familiar, yet loose visual framework. Blending disparate histories and themes can give the overall presentation a recognizable, yet unique flavor.
John Dyer Baizley
#70. I believe there are so many other disciplines and themes that we still haven't explored yet. It's infinite what we can apply our creativity to.
Guy Laliberte
#71. The transnational availability of literary themes related to Nazism is a peculiar sign of cultural globalization. After
Hector Hoyos
#72. 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.
Sara Zarr
#74. Themes so vast that only composers could even approach them. If at all. All other artists must practice humility before them.
Jan-Philipp Sendker
#75. The more aware individuals are of the themes that are central to their own sense of personal identity, the better they can recognize the dimensions of similarity and difference in other people that will contribute to intimate relationships.
Barbara M. Newman
#76. I like the stories with the historical themes.
Sarah Sutton
#77. This is natural: one must read Herodotus's book-and every great book-repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images, and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
#78. I tell everyone I interact with what I'm working on and let them bring me anecdotes that illustrate my themes.
Chuck Palahniuk
#79. I can't make a movie unless I believe in the themes behind it. I mean, that's the first question I ask myself, always, is, 'What is this movie about?'
Jake Gyllenhaal
#80. Already at sixteen, my mind was a battlefield: my love of pagan beauty, the male nude, at war with my religious faith. A polarity of themes and forms: one spiritual, the other earthly.
Michelangelo
#81. Each of these strategies-get a little better at it, design a support system, use one of your strongest themes to overwhelm your weakness, find a partner, and just stop doing it-can help you as you strive to build your life around your strengths.
Donald O. Clifton
#82. One thing it makes me realize is just how similar we all are, around the globe. The details may be different, but every human heart is touched by themes like hope, comfort and mercy.
Matt Redman
#83. I don't try to call myself a poet. But I know that my stuff is pretty literal, in that the themes are pretty simple and on the surface.
Bo Burnham
#84. 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Alice in Wonderland' inspired me. I wanted to take those themes and try to bring it into a more 21st story with aliens.
Tony DiTerlizzi
#85. They say great themes make great novels.. but what these young writers don't understand is that there is no greater theme than men and women.
John O'Hara
#86. Every day I fantasise about situations and little themes I see in front of me that would make a good beginning of a story. But one has to be disciplined and just sit down and do it.
Emilia Fox
#87. We used the Western style to express our own themes and stories. But don't forget that our heritage includes The Thousand and One Nights.
Naguib Mahfouz
#88. I find a very guilty pleasure in dark themes and vibes, and finding where the transcending nature of awareness meets this darkness.
Mike Scheidt
#89. Once we start hitting lyrical themes that can whack you from all these different perspectives, we know we're onto something special.
Chester Bennington
#90. I am able to write musically about the visual. I can pick up tones, I can pick up themes. And I find visual art is a wonderful launching-off place.
Lawrence Weschler
#91. His themes were not pride and love at all, though he used the words perpetually; as he used them they meant self-praise and hate.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#92. More generally, I made an effort to leave out things that weren't relevant to the main narrative themes of the book, namely that there were two sides to Steve Jobs: the romantic, poetic, countercultural rebel on one side, and the serious businessperson on the other.
Walter Isaacson
#93. I think my music's more disturbing than Tupac's - or at least I thought some of the themes of 'The Downward Spiral' were more disturbing on a deeper level - you know, issues about suicide and hating yourself and God and people and everything else.
Trent Reznor
#94. Paranormal romance gives me the opportunity to explore love outside of its traditional boundaries. Common themes are hunger and uncontrollable desires, but I like to push further into wounds that cannot be healed and the way love can still find its way into the cracks of a fractured soul.
Stephanie Draven
#95. Pay attention to the big themes because that's what will help you earn ten times your money.
Barry Sternlicht
#96. The ditties blend Japanese popular culture themes of saccharine, childlike goodness and viciously detached sadism, which Aum drew upon as it tapped the barely suppressed rage of the young against their society.
Robert Jay Lifton
#97. I think horror films in the past maybe touched on social themes having to do with whatever era in which they were made, but in the end, it's definitely an escapist form of entertainment.
Brooke Nevin
#98. My themes will not be far-fetched. I will tell of homely every-day phenomena and adventures.
Henry David Thoreau
#99. The themes that the anti-globalization protesters bring to the discussion are of extraordinary importance. However, the theses that they often bring to it, sometimes in the form of slogans, are often oversimple.
Amartya Sen
#100. 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.
Luke Evans
