Greil Marcus Quotes

There are a thousand weird untold stories in the Australian film industry, this has been one of them.

It's so much work to make a movie, and for me it has to get me off my butt. To get me actually writing you have to strike something inside, you have to hit a power main to get the energy. You have to strike something you care about.

The best books arise from some ultimate question in the author.

Writers are frequently asked why they wrote their first book. A more interesting answer might come from asking them why they wrote their second one.

There's got to be something you want to tell and that's the engine which spurs all of the work you have to do in order to create the story, but you have to love some sort of nugget of what you're telling to be a filmmaker.

I started producing work with an ecstatic addiction.

My music is part of the quest I have to find new ways of telling stories, and also, I want to inspire people.

The reason I don't make more movies is because it's really hard to find ideas that I go, 'Yeah, I could spend two years of my life doing this.' Mostly what I do is say no to movies because I go, 'Maybe I would see that, but I don't think I could spend two years on it. I'd go nuts.'

I love the rush of being creative. I really think I live for it.

Once I have the grain of an idea, it haunts me until I finish the story. I don't like to be haunted, of course, so immediately get to work.

Sometimes you read a script, and you just think, 'Wow, I would love to go and tell that story, and I don't even care what happens to the film, I would just love that experience.' And often, that mentality makes a great film.

I don't want to make a movie till I have an idea I have to make. I don't want to make a movie just to make a movie.

We don't choose the books we write; they choose us.

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?'

I'm interested in stories that aren't getting told: it's where my interests lie.

I'm always looking for interesting stories, and I feel in independent film there's more opportunity.

I got the 'Max Rose' script, and I fell in love with it. It just hit me. It was something that needed to be made.

I personally tend to be drawn to stories that aren't paid much attention to, or stories that aren't on people's radar.

It's time for storytellers to tell the stories that have not had the privilege of being shown to the world, and the audience will be there.

If the script doesn't excite me, there's no point working on the music.

I have always wanted to write a novel, and I tried many times but could never find the right story. One day, I was walking on the beach, and the idea for 'Groundswell' hit me. I went into the house and started writing and never stopped.

The artist is inherently a romantic to some degree, and as such, I believe in a muse. But I don't try to analyze too much where it comes from.

When you receive a script and it leaps out at you and it's breathing with its own heartbeat - I suppose when you read something like that it's not a choice of whether you do it or don't. It feels like it chooses you, so you just do it.

I want to do journalism on journalists. I want to do the stories on stories that aren't being told.

One of the things I have noticed about my novels is that they all concern people who can't quite bring themselves to tell the truth about their own lives... I've come to realise that this interest in damaged, untellable stories comes from my parents.