Love songs are the most complex to write because everyone knows about it.
We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.
I wanted to make the soundtrack of people's lives.
Just like multiplex theatres, the industry had become divided, making films that alienated one kind of audience or another. It was really time to come out of the niche and make something that, at a certain level, clicked with everyone. 'Wanted' did just that. It opened the gates once more.
The western is a universal frame within which it's possible to comment on today.
In a way, perhaps, there's an advantage of being on the edge of something and looking in as the observer, because as the filmmaker, you're the storyteller, and you're pulling out this universal story.
'Frankenstein' feels like an ancient tale, the kind of traditional story that appears in many other forms.
I think that's what poetry does. It allows people to come together and identify with a common thing that is outside of themselves, but which they identify with from the interior.
Whenever I write, I try and approach my stories from some kind of universal theme or idea or emotion.
I think people throughout the world identify with my characters.
That's the gift 'Precious' has given me. You really think you're telling a story about a fat black girl, and only fat black girls will understand it, and then you realize we're all Precious.
The quality of a timeless song is that it's catchy, meaningful and relatable.
Poems are other people's snapshots in which we see our own lives.
To me exposition always contains tenderness. While a dramatized scene is a way of proving and guaranteeing an emotional experience for the reader, exposition assumes that the reader is sophisticated and can see the universal.
Bond is a classic archetype character, a character that's embedded in our heads forever, one of a lone warrior setting out to avenge a nation - and you find that character across cultures.
...combining the concrete and the universal is at the center of what makes art important.
Relating a person to the whole world: that is the meaning of cinema.
Well, 'Terminator', it's just such an iconic movie in movie history. It's universal. I think it's part of the pop culture of the world.
Everything in this world has a hidden meaning.
Everyone has a ghost story, or at least that's how it has always seemed to me.
Pretty much anybody who's ever worked can relate to our show.
'Ida' is about humanity, about guilt and forgiveness. It's not a film that deals with an issue as such. It's more universal.
We're human, this is our world, and I think we learn that that which is most personal is most general. And so, in a sense, we disappear into this larger world.
Poetry is not about personal pain or tragedy. It should resonate the society's grief.
The truth is, everything ultimately comes down to the relationship between the reader and the writer and the characters. Does or does not a character address moral being in a universal and important way? If it does, then it's literature.
