Themes With Quotes

#1. While it's true that some writers, when taking on love and war, find the task too big, or only succeed in one but not the other, Mengestu tracks both themes with authority and feeling.

Meg Wolitzer

#2. OSS 117 and maybe Un Balcon Sur La Mer directed by Nicole Garcia. It's a typical French movie with typical French themes with French actors, a French director ...

Jean Dujardin

#3. 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

#4. When I look back over my novels what I find is that when I think I'm finished with a theme, I'm generally not. And usually themes will recur from novel to novel in odd, new guises.

Richard Russo

#5. My friend is composing an epic in Byronic stanzas entitled "True History of Autua, Last Moriori" & interrupts my journal writing to ask what rhymes with what: - "Streams of blood"? "Themes of mud"? "Robin Hood"?

David Mitchell

#6. I never get bored talking about themes dealing with ambition, leadership and what it means to be an American. I love that stuff. I just love it. I've loved it ever since I was on 'The West Wing.'

Rob Lowe

#7. In a way, producing, experiencing, and interacting with art is like participating in a long-running conversation that artists have been having and will keep having in the future. Themes

Derek Yu

#8. You want comedic themes to be recogniseable life truths that we all battle with, and with that comes the healing properties of comedy.

Miranda Hart

#9. Every man who has an idol or admires someone can recognise its themes. It's not only a film about the relationship between fans and idols, it's also a love story, a story of a man who is depressed, who has problems in his relationship with his teenage step-children.

Eric Cantona

#10. I never thought I would write about the Book of Revelation. It's so dense; it's so complex and puzzling. But then I found I was thinking about a number of themes, one of which has to do with politics and religion.

Elaine Pagels

#11. I remember when one dressed the part for the West End, and strolled with yellow gloves and a walking-stick. But that world has gone, and another takes its place, eyes see differently, emotions react to other themes. Men weep at jazz, and violence has become sexual. Time marches on.

Charlie Chaplin

#12. 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.

Seth Grahame-Smith

#13. But it's much more exciting to make Die Hard. One of the reasons that I think that movie is so successful is it deals with those very important blue-collar relationship themes. But it's more visually beautiful to show things blowing up. It just gives you more on the screen.

Penn Jillette

#14. While many of my musicals deal with big themes and ideas, I don't intentionally go looking to write shows like that. A story will interest me, and then somewhere along the way, I discover that hidden inside are these epic themes.

Stephen Schwartz

#15. If you're gonna take people on a journey that deals with some pretty heavy themes, I think you best have a sense of humor, here and there.

Francesca Gregorini

#16. After finishing the work I start rearranging the parts again and eventually start to work with themes - images and thoughts and things.

Tim Zuck

#17. With my students, I don't offer any simple tips like that, maybe because my own process is pretty messy, but when we workshop we talk a lot about the deeper subject, which is what the story or novel is about. I think defining a narrative's themes can lay bare a narrative's tensions.

Edan Lepucki

#18. Our theme is, 'Respected abroad, strong at home.' What do we mean by that? Basically that we want a strong emphasis on affordable health care and education, safer at home, positive themes. And respected abroad
a foreign policy with alliances.

Bill Richardson

#19. If one wants to go on living, one must evolve. Before, when we composed, we would start by a series of music themes. Once created, we would hire writers and lyricists to make up the text and the story line. I was the first to do this backwards with 'Man of La Mancha.'

Mitch Leigh

#20. I guess I try to find the humor by juxtaposing deeper themes in literature with what people perceive as being lighter, disposable children's fare in comics.

Robert Sikoryak

#21. I think age is really changing how I write and the themes that I connect with. But there are also things I'm really intrigued about.

Abi Morgan

#22. I think the themes in my songs are very similar from the first album to the newest one. It's all about the human condition and how we are all trying to learn to live with each other and survive love and life.

Deana Carter

#23. In my acting, I have to identify with something in the character. The big tough boy on the side of right - that's me. Simple themes. Same me from the nuances. All I do is sell sincerity and I've been selling the hell out of that ever since I started.

John Wayne

#24. The winds that blow our billions away return burdened with themes of scorn and dispraise.

Garet Garrett

#25. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do, but when you try to deal with prescient themes in the present, that is what you're doing.

Quentin Tarantino

#26. People like scary stories. There's a fascination with fear themes, and we want to face those things in a weird, subconscious way.

Mel Gibson

#27. One of the great themes in American literature is the individual's confrontation with the vast open spaces of the continent.

Justin Cronin

#28. The greatest sci-fis, in my mind, are two things: They're what-ifs - what if this happened, and you get to see it - but they're also these philosophical cautionary tales. They deal with the underlying themes beneath the what-if.

Bryce Dallas Howard

#29. 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.

Harvey Weinstein

#30. The 1930s birthed two great agrarian novels: 'Gone with the Wind' from the viewpoint of the ruling class, 'The Grapes of Wrath' for the underclass. And both were turned into movies that dared to be true to the books' controversial themes.

Richard Corliss

#31. I think audiences can deal with these mature themes.

Harvey Weinstein

#32. In my writing with Extreme, there are heavy themes. The cover photo has me with a gun to my neck. I am not advocating suicide. I am taking the philosophy that man is the measure of his own fate.

Gary Cherone

#33. 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.

Atom Egoyan

#34. Men prominent in life are mostly hard to converse with. They lack small-talk, and at the same time one doesn't like to confront them with their own great themes.

Max Beerbohm

#35. I also believe that you are what you have to defend, and if you're a black man that's always going to be the bar against which you are judged, whether you want to align yourself with those themes or not. You can think of yourself as a colourless person, but nobody else is gonna.

Don Cheadle

#36. I was making big paintings with mythological themes. When I started painting black figures, the white professors were relieved, and the black students were like, 'She's on our side.' These are the kinds of issues that a white male artist just doesn't have to deal with.

Kara Walker

#37. 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.

Julian Casablancas

#38. I love outsider stories. And I also like a lot of genre fiction, too. So I wanted to write a literary book that flirted with thriller and fantasy and even science fiction. I wanted the coming-of-age story and the love story to be about "outsiderdom" - one of the themes I am most interested in.

Porochista Khakpour

#39. California seemed to me to be all about secrets and the need for safety. And this leads to this thematic messiness I'm still trying to figure out what to do with. I mean, when it comes to the themes, this is nothing like an Atwood novel.

Edan Lepucki

#40. Working on the themes I was interested in, through the context of a particular family, was a very economical way of dealing with a lot of the issues I was concerned with.

Atom Egoyan

#41. 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.

Garth Nix

#42. When authors claim new revelations dealing with apocalyptic themes, book sales increase. Christians who chase after the sensational constantly look for keys to unlock the mysteries of the apocalypse.

Stan Newton

#43. Basically, I'm motivated to write about sociopolitical issues as well as relationships. I think those themes have stayed with me throughout my life.

Jimmy Cliff

#44. He was the boy that made mix tapes with themes and hand-colored covers until the day he hit my sister and stopped crying.

Stephen Chbosky

#45. Life is a symphony composed by God, played by us with preludes, themes, movements, passages ... and wrong notes, so many wrong notes. Heaven is where we get to hear the music played perfectly for the first time.

Tiffany Reisz

#46. A theatrical spectacle is inherent whenever family members congregate and reacquaint themselves with powerful universal themes educed from homecomings including hugs, food, drink, conversation, politics, games, music, conflict, terror, mercy, smiles, tears, prayers, misfortune, and self-discovery.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#47. There's something in the Zeitgeist now. A lot of [film] scripts I get have these very dark themes, a cornucopia of dysfunction. You know, Jane is a 13-year-old anorexic who lives with her parents and has been raped by her father. And this is a comedy.

Christine Vachon

#48. I think books with spiritual themes simply point to the deeper mysteries of life - to what lies beyond us, to what's hidden inside of us, or perhaps to an understanding of what truly matters.

Sue Monk Kidd

#49. We constantly encounter themes that arouse sexual desire, often coupled with themes of violence. If our collective consciousness is filled with violent sexual seeds, why should we be surprised when there is sexual abuse of children, rape, and other violent acts?

Thich Nhat Hanh

#50. The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern.

Ian Rankin

#51. To begin ... To begin ... How to start? I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That's a good muffin.

Charlie Kaufman

#52. It is a very beautiful story, 'The Crow.' It is a very tragic story with huge emotional themes.

Luke Evans

#53. 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

#54. 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

#55. '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

#56. 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

#57. I tell everyone I interact with what I'm working on and let them bring me anecdotes that illustrate my themes.

Chuck Palahniuk

#58. 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

#59. I like the stories with the historical themes.

Sarah Sutton

#60. 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

#61. 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

#62. Life stories with themes of ruin can trap us. Life stories that are triumphant can transform us.

Meg Jay

#63. 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

#64. 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

#65. The Bible is the most thought suggesting book in the world. No other deals with such grand themes.

Herrick Johnson

#66. As an actor, I am meant to dabble with different themes and genres.

Sanjay Dutt

#67. 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

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. 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

#71. 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

#72. 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

#73. The problem with themes is that writers don't realise they are themes until someone points them out.

Tobias Hill

#74. 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

#75. 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

#76. 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

#77. Well I didn't actually see the Matrix but I've seen other movies where with similar sorts of themes.

Roger Penrose

#78. I'm happy to stick with my persona. There are themes of love lost and love regained, but the main themes of all poems are basically love and death, and that seems to be the message of poetry.

Billy Collins

#79. We lead more interesting lives than we think. We are characters in plots, without the compression and numinous sheen. Our lives, examined carefully in all their affinities and links, abound with suggestive meaning, with themes and involute turnings we have not allowed ourselves to see completely.

Don DeLillo

#80. Each of my books is different from the last, each with its own characters, its own setting, its own themes. As a writer, I need the variety. I sense my readers do, too.

Barbara Delinsky

#81. One's story isn't a skin to be shed - it's inescapable, one's body and blood. You go on pumping it out till you die, the story veined with the themes of your life, the ever-recurring story that's at once your invention and the invention of you.

Philip Roth

#82. I think what 'The Hobbit' and Middle-earth deal in are quite universal and timeless themes of honour and love and friendship ... so they're things that do resonate with people.

Martin Freeman

#83. Themes that are "too large for adult fiction can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book" - Philip Pullman
(Hunt and Lenz, 2001, p. 122 as cited by Hunt, 2005, p. 204)

Philip Pullman

#84. 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.

Dave Brubeck

#85. Writing the record for me - every record is almost a surprise. When people ask me, what are the themes you want to grapple with on this one? I have no idea until the record's finished.

Alanis Morissette

#86. Thrills, chills, spine-tingling mystery, and lots of smiles. It's not easy to combine heart-pounding danger with gut-busting laughs and make it work, but Peterson pulls it off. For readers who want nonstop action infused with powerful, life-changing themes, North! Or Be Eaten is a must-read.

Wayne Thomas Batson

#87. I thought of the structure as musical. The first piece, for instance, contains the names/subject matter of every person to come in the book. Like a piece of music with themes, etc.

Hilton Als

#88. You leave the previous book with idea's and themes - characters even - caught in the fibers of your clothing - and when you open a new book, they are still with you.

Diane Setterfield

#89. I have a baby that is 21 months old, and I watch Disney Junior with him. A lot of those shows are about pirates. Even the T-shirts and pajamas I buy for him have pirate themes like, 'Aye-aye, argh and mate.' But, I definitely grew up watching pirates.

Yasmine Al Masri

#90. If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.

Anthony Burgess

#91. Thanksgiving is a season that is very much in accord with the themes and teachings of Jesus Christ.

John Clayton

#92. We can handle all European themes, handle them without superstition, with an irreverence which can have, and already does have, fortunate consequences.

Jorge Luis Borges

#93. There are themes that somehow stir me and that I find very interesting. They're themes that deal with leadership, the nature of bravery and courage, and how to define those.

Stephen Lang

#94. I realized that if I wanted to truly talk about vastness and the sublime and scale and the West - recurrent themes in my overall work - I needed to engage with the vast ocean that is Los Angeles.

Michael Light

#95. I'm always writing across the same themes. But with short stories, I'm doing something different than with novels. In some ways, they're coming from a much deeper place.

Lynn Coady

#96. We never write anything with themes. We just write the same rubbish all the time.

John Lennon

#97. 'Dirty Jobs' is a fun, simple little show with huge themes under it. For me, it's penance, it's redemption, it's a sweaty mess.

Mike Rowe

#98. Unfortunately, many talented people in Hollywood find their values and politics do not reflect the content they create, and many movie themes are in direct contrast with over half of today's American families.

Allen Covert

#99. 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.

Daniel H. Wilson

#100. 'Elect the Dead' is a rock record that takes you on a journey with different types of genres integrated, different lyrical themes digested, and many fun and colorful moments to enjoy.

Serj Tankian