Lascelles Abercrombie Quotes

I'm only interested in science fiction that's used as a literary device, a shortcut into something more exploratory or universal about our experience. That's why I think it was invented and why mythology was invented; it's a tool, not an end to itself.

I'll write about myself, or people I know, or archetypal characters, but the goal is to get at some truth, not to necessarily convey my own experience as an individual to the world.

I think love is the through line and it's universal and it doesn't matter what period of time, time or place, or people, that's something we all connect to. That's the thin thread that I think keeps it altogether.

I like traditions, and the national anthem is important.

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.

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

I think that we need mythology. We need a bedrock of story and legend in order to live our lives coherently.

Myth is supposed to bring us together, but fantasy alienates us.

There is no work of art that has ever been made that is absolutely truthful about life.

The real problem is arranging that experience in a way that tells a story, which is just incredible enough to be interesting, but credible enough to be believed.

I don't think that my films are 'literary'; they are based on the most ordinary things of life.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

There's only one thing that everyone in this world has in common: whether you want to love somebody and you want to be loved in return.

When I was in Marine training I memorised 'The Waste Land,' which was a significant experience in terms of really breaking apart language and thinking about how the different voices in that poem function.

I know the movies that I've liked, and I know the experience that they've given me, so the goal is always to try to create a movie that I would like myself and that would knock me out, challenge me or intrigue me in some way. That's been my criteria for figuring out what I want to do, or also when I'm writing something or creating a scene.

Dramatic experience is not logical; it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form.

I believe that when people experience an event as a community, it can transcend and change people's lives.

But it's not just a game of finding literary references.

Anything that reflects the human condition back on humans in the entertainment medium is art.

The fundamental purpose of a novel like Count Julian is to achieve the unity of object and means of representation, the fusion of treason as scheme and treason as language.

The heart of the theater is the play itself, how it dramatizes life to make it meaningful entertainment. To achieve depth and universality, the playwright must subject himself to intense critique, to know human character and behavior, and finally to construct art from the most mundane of human experience.

This is indeed not only relevant to Documentary but is evident is most type of film making. The film often mirrors the experience, understanding and politics of the director.

Good fiction reveals feeling, refines events, locates importance and, though its methods are as mysterious as they are varied, intensifies the experience of living our own lives.

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

Louis Malle was the best filmmaker I've ever worked with. He was such an artist. He was dealing with the theme of innocence and experience.