Julia Gillard Quotes

I learned that myth doesn’t mean a lie; it means a traditional story that tells you something about people and their worldview and what they hold sacred. Interesting.

You've got to reach towards a better language, and you're not going to make it up from scratch; you've got to reach back into the tradition. Western tradition is not as impoverished as a lot of people would like to think, but you'd have to go back before the industrial revolution; you may have to go back farther than that. Of course, the Bible has a perfectly adequate language, but it's suffered a lot of thoughtless wear.

Western civilization shapes the content of my films, provides me with subjects that haven't been used before.

All myths that are something more than fancies gain rather than lose in value with time, by reason of the accretions of human experience.

Whatever your relationship is to your sacred tradition in the West, you have some relationship to the Bible if only through the names of the characters.

Because we are all of an oral tradition in our beginning histories, the voice of the poet in this particular society will be heard.

Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It's where it all began and ended.

By recycling pre-existing material, Shakespeare seemed to endorse a view common in his time, which has become even more entrenched in the 400 years since: that all the truly essential stories are already in the bag.

The thing is, fairytales were once a very gritty way for people to dialogue about aspects of life.

For me, a story begins with music: I feel the rhythm, the cadence, the pulse of the characters and their voices and the setting. Because I had just finished writing a book called 'Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine,' I was already filled with the music of the lives and culture of the Irish people, so I thought, why not use it?

I have been aware since my youth that I am a Hebrew through my mother, and that is something that has played a subtle but important role in my development.

As artists, our primary function is not to be educators - but we are at a time in history, where for us, our history needs to give context for stories that we hope to tell down the road.

I think about Shakespeare. Because there have been hundreds of variations of Shakespeare's plays since they've been written, and I believe it's because they're important. They're still relevant today. 'Roots' is still relevant today. The idea that we shouldn't tell this story again is very strange to me.

Why do I feel so exercised about what we think of the people of the Middle Ages? ... I guess it's because so many of their voices are ringing vibrantly in my ears - Chaucer's, Boccaccio's, Henry Knighton's, Thomas Walsingham's. Froissart's, Jean Creton's... writers and contemporary historians of the period who seem to me just as individual, just as alive as we are today. We need to get to know these folk better in order to know who we are ourselves.

I think that intelligent people to a great extent are captives of their time or place.

People are a lot more open than even they think they are. And I feel like I carry a heavy story about where I come from and those roots, but also what I like as a thinker.

I think worldwide, the movement has been towards accepting and respecting the individuality and the rights of gay people, lesbians and transgender people. Here, however, age-old cultural mindsets - which also comes from Victorian times, affect the thinking of people.

I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature.

I want to make movies that people see. I really think that movies are the most popular form of story telling ever and have such a huge impact on culture when they do.

You can't be from Montgomery, Alabama, and not have a background in the church. It's at the core of who we are as a people.

I do think that every generation has its unique story.

What disturbs or assures us about race has very little to do with blood or biology. Race is about how you use language, understand your heritage, interpret your history, identify with your kin, figure out what your meaning and worth to a society that places values on you beyond your control. And it's also about what people see you as - or take you to be.

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.

Our history is a passion for me. I feel that we leave out so much information and huge gaps in the American story and it makes it hard for people to really understand that we are all intricately related as Americans. So I am attracted to historically based projects because we entertain and learn something at the same time. I just love that combination.

I think where you're born brings a history with it - a cultural history, a mythical history, an ancestral history, a religious context - and certainly influences your perception of the world and how you interpret everyday reality.