Mani Ratnam Quotes

We're living in a tremendously new landscape, and the possibility of what can be created is immense. These tools of the moving image have a relatively short history in art, and what we can do with them is still largely unknown. We are still innovating and finding ways to tell stories.

I think there is a lot of technology that is finding its way into our storytelling - it's pretty unavoidable.

I think theatre to some extent is always about telling stories, isn't it, and I think what I've learned is that freedom comes when you tell your story; freedom comes when you tell the truth.

Whether one likes it or not, the screen is a profoundly important source of imagery and storytelling for this generation. For me, books remain a stunning place to tell stories, but the screen has a place.

The rise of the Internet and the camera phone have started to change what stories are accessible.

Because even very young people are expert readers of pictures, you can convey very complex and subtle messages through pictures that you'd need loads of words to explain. Making a picture book is also a bit like making your own film - and you can make anything you want happen, however impossible!

The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.

Video gives people a voice.

I feel very lucky and privileged to be a writer. I feel lucky in the sense that I can branch out into prose and tell different kinds of stories and stuff. But being a writer is so great because you're literally not dependent on anybody.

Digital imaging has untied our hands with regards to technical limitations. We no longer have to be arbiters of technology; we get to participate in the interpretation of technology into creative content.

The Internet has been a great outlet for storytelling. After all, there are web-based shows that have started online and have then gotten picked up. I think it's a great opportunity for artists to get through the network roadblock. It just allows us another venue to be creative in.

Telling a story in a futuristic world gives you this freedom to explore things that bother you in contemporary times.

For years, I was watching other people have so much fun playing out their version of authorship, like Louis C.K. and Larry David. As I watched them do their thing, I began to pine for the days when I had a lot less expected of me and, often, a lot more creative freedom. The courage that those guys have is always captivating to me.

Because storytelling, and visual storytelling, was put in the hands of everybody, and we have all now become storytellers.

People always ask why I stay in the online space versus going to TV or film, like most people would do, and the answer is that there's opportunity for innovation online - not only innovation in storytelling, but also innovation in how you interact with your audience and that is very fulfilling to me personally.

Digital technology allows us a much larger scope to tell stories that were pretty much the grounds of the literary media.

The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrilling.

My brother Van got the computer first and showed me what it was like to edit video. I definitely credit Van with turning me onto filmmaking.

I think television keeps on being a place where writers can go, and if they're successful, they can have their way, and they can have creative freedom.

Television and film are such streamlined story mediums. You can't really meander about, whereas a novel is an interior experience.

The novelist is the vestigial bone on the body cinema. We're like the little toe that can be cut off.

Writing" is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound.

I understand the visual media very well, as I used to write comic books for Walt Disney, and I've written a graphic novel. How you carry a story in pictures is different than how you do it in text.

There's something about Jason Katims' writing that just feels like home to me. He gives you so much liberty to play, which you don't find on most TV shows. You just don't.

There will always be storytelling, whether it's on the big silver screen, or it's your television or your iPhone or whatever, people will keep on telling stories.