Classic Tale Quotes

You never write a theme for a movie thinking, 'This will live forever.'

I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.

One of the pillars of 'Cyrano' is recreating a love story and, like any archetype, these great stories tend to be captivating, among other things, because they are made of those universal things that move us.

'The Notebook' gets me every time. It's a great love story. Boy from the wrong side of the tracks. They get on each other's nerves, but they can't live without each other. It almost makes me shed a tear.

I personally am a very big fan of 'Romeo + Juliet.' It had a visceral power to it that I thought was just exhilarating. It was a very arresting and very disturbing and deeply compelling version of the play.

The vampire story is something that has existed since 'Nosferatu,' and I don't think it's gonna go away.

I always believed 'The Fly' to be a classic opera story. It's a tale of love and death, true love surviving in the face of physical decay and ultimate sacrifice.

'Frankenstein' feels like an ancient tale, the kind of traditional story that appears in many other forms.

When I was really little, my favorite book was 'The BFG'. I read it - my teacher in, like, first grade read it to us. I love that book.

Everyone is introduced to the Peter Pan story when they're very young. This story is part of everyone's life.

'Snow White' was really hip for its time. Walt Disney was basically using Sigmund Romberg and operetta in the telling of the story, and through animation - that was revolutionary.

'Bambi' is an amazing film, and when you watch it today, it's just as beautiful. It's timeless. It's just as beautiful today as it was back then.

I always liked Disney films. To this day I think 'Bambi' is great.

I've heard from quite a few people, you sense that there is an ownership of the [ Cinderella], it was so personal for so many people, so I was interested in trying to work out why that was.

ELANTRIS is a new BEN HUR for the fantasy genre, with a sweeping, epic storyline and closely personal characters.

Trying to please everyone can be very hard, but, like 'Shrek' or 'The Simpsons,' 'Robin Hood' manages to entertain adults and children at the same time, but in different ways.

Only a few things are worth a second reading—rarely are things of such enduring quality that they are read many times and live to inspire a second or third generation.

The first time I watched 'The Magnificent Seven' on TV on a Sunday afternoon, I knew it was going to be a different kind of western.

There's so many versions of 'Red Riding Hood.' It goes back 700 years.

When I read 'The Master', I felt that I had read a true classic. It's so rare nowadays that you have that feeling: it was a privilege to read it.

You want to make money, remake 'Cinderella.' You want to move people, remake the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth.

'Peter Pan' is a beloved property. It's a property that was brought to the screen many, many times before, so one has to not only justify the reasons why one might make a 'Peter Pan' movie in 2018, 2019 or whatever, but you also have to do justice to the source material.

Gypsy [Rose Lee] is as unique as she is timeless. Her story is classic Americana, and the strangest rags-to-riches saga you'll ever read; I like to call it Horatio Alger meets Tim Burton.

With 'Avatar,' I thought, Forget all these chick flicks and do a classic guys' adventure movie, something in the Edgar Rice Burroughs mold, like John Carter of Mars - a soldier goes to Mars.

There's a book called 'Where The Wild Things Are,' by American writer Maurice Sendak... it really is the most sublime book. It's a picture book, but it works at so many levels, and it's fantastic.