Christopher Nolan Quotes

I believe in mythology. I guess I share Joseph Campbell's notion that a culture or society without mythology would die, and we're close to that.

I must admit to being greatly influenced by Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

'Journey' was very much inspired by Joseph Campbell's work for 'The Hero's Journey,' but, from among his works, I like 'The Power of Myth' best.

I look at the story, I look at the idea and just try to think of it in terms of that whole body of myth and see where the characters fit in and what they ought to be doing-all those archetypes are there to play with.

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.

I think with movies I am really connecting to the Joseph Campbell idea of the collective unconscious.

As I work, I see my writing - each scene, each chapter, each section, each book - in three-act structures and classic myths, and I analyze them through the handy filter of the detective story.

I've tried to show in my most recent book, the 'Irresistible Fairytale', that in order to talk about any genre, particularly what we call simple genre - a myth, a legend, an anecdote, a tall tale, and so on - we really have to understand something about the origin of stories all together.

I've been playing with this idea in my mind that the hero's journey that we're all taught as screenwriters may resonate more specifically for male protagonists and maybe even male viewers.

One of the ready advantages of writing a road or quest story is that it mirrors the experience of writing a novel.

My dad was just a big Joseph Campbell nut.

I was an English-literature major, and that's all about stories and narratives.

The nature of storytelling, since the dawn of man, has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The pleasure of reading a story and wondering what will come next for the hero is a pleasure that has lasted for centuries and, I think, will always be with us.

There's something about film that offers this opportunity to stick to a very, very clear single protagonist's point of view, and I like that.

I believe that the Kane/Undertaker story, if you look at epic storytelling like Greek mythology, that is what it is. It is the best piece of epic storytelling that the WWE has ever done.

The hero's journey is simply who we are as human beings.

Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?

I write as if I'm someone reading the book - often people ask if I write one strand first and then go back and seed in the other, but I don't think I could keep track of who knows what, and the tension would come out wrong, so the answer is no - I write it more or less in the order you read it.

Unlike a novel, where you expect a different kind of arc that leaves us with a somber sense of resolution, I think a story in some ways as like a train window: being able to watch the landscape pass for a certain amount of time. And then your stop arrives, and you have to leave.

I think all good short stories are about what it means to tell a good story.

I could make up characters till the cows came home. Plot's what hard. Very hard.

When I began writing novels, I read Aristotle to learn how to perfect structure, Pearl Cleage to sustain tension, and Nora Roberts for characterization.

I'm a huge believer in story being this invisible scaffolding that no one ever recognizes or realizes is actually making the audience engaged in what's going on. There is no formula for it.

When a show starts out, you're immediately trying to identify your goodies and baddies, and trying to place people in your mind where you think they belong.