Latest Julie Taymor Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• What I don't know for sure is what's next for me - and I don't mind that. I know for sure that whatever happens will be interesting and will challenge and excite me.

  Julie Taymor

  Interesting, Challenges, Mind

• Everything amounts to nothing if you don't love someone or something.

  Julie Taymor

  Love Someone, Amount, Ifs

• I don't want to sound like a heroic woman or to seem full of myself, but I do have a core of trust that I'll figure things out and find my way. And if whatever I try is not a good experience, even that is a good experience. If something turns out lousy, it's interesting.

  Julie Taymor

  Interesting, Trying, Want

• You have to stop yourself from even thinking about failing.

  Julie Taymor

  Thinking, Failing

• You just have to throw fear out the window. If there's anything that's going to hold you back, it's fear.

  Julie Taymor

  Window, Ifs

• You don't have to patronize your audience, and you can mix art and commerce in a profound way. You can simultaneously play to the sophisticated, 60-year-old theatergoers and to 4-year-olds.

  Julie Taymor

  Art, Years, Play

• My mother was okay with me not playing it safe. She made an agreement with my father that I was going to be raised differently than my brother and sister were. My parents went through the whole sixties rebellion with my brother and sister. But I didn't feel like I had to rebel because I didn't have anyone telling me I couldn't do something. I never went into that parents-as-enemies stage.

  Julie Taymor

  Mother, Brother, Father

• I know I'm missing something, but those who have children are missing what I get to do. And frankly, I'm probably missing more of what I don't want than what I do. Some may call me selfish or narcissistic, but I don't want to spend my time going to PTA meetings. The only way I could have children and do the work I do is to have a househusband - and I'm not attracted to a househusband. I'd rather affect children with the work I do.

  Julie Taymor

  Children, Selfish, Missing

• My aesthetic is not a Disney aesthetic at all, but when I met with the wonderful producers at Disney, they weren't looking for me to do their aesthetic. I'd already spent 20 years in the theater, so if they were going to hire me, they'd be hiring me for what I have to offer.

  Julie Taymor

  Years, Wonderful, Theater

• Learning is about much more than science and math. Doing theater, music, and art in school really helps children's minds grow because they're using different parts of their brains. Parents who care should insist on that.

  Julie Taymor

  Art, Children, School

• When we were kids, you picked up a little paper and put it on a stick; and when you waved it back and forth, you understood the power of air underneath the wings. In that way, a child begins to understand abstraction, poetry, metaphor, symbolism. You play with the materials you have and use your imagination to make them into something else. That what's so sad about having everything on a little screen - it's not physical and dimensional, and that seems backward.

  Julie Taymor

  Children, Kids, Air

• When I was growing up, there were a lot more arts in the public schools. Politically, America has screwed up on that.

  Julie Taymor

  Art, Growing Up, School

• It's how you tell the story that makes it new. That's what artists do. They let us look at the world from a different perspective. They let us look at birds in a way that makes us never see birds again in the same way. That's why I don't think computers are healthy for kids. They're too literal. You pop a button and a bluebird comes out. You pop another button and you can take the color blue and shove it into the outline of the bluebird.

  Julie Taymor

  Kids, Artist, Thinking

• I want to experience a performance on all levels - I want goose bumps and I want to leave the movie or play arguing about something that's unresolved.

  Julie Taymor

  Play, Bumps, Levels

• A performance can have amazing visuals and special effects, but it has to tell a good story, even if that story isn't original.

  Julie Taymor

  Special, Stories, Visuals

• We're really having a problem right now in our culture. I haven't seen one movie lately in which the story and visuals have been equally good.

  Julie Taymor

  Culture, Stories, Problem

• An artist is an entertainer, number one - a storyteller who takes people someplace, who gives them what they didn't know they wanted.

  Julie Taymor

  Artist, Numbers, People

• In America, the word art has become like the word adultery. It's this big scarlet letter. When you say you're an artist, people are like, "Ugh."

  Julie Taymor

  Art, America, People

• I'm a firm believer in the idea that theater excels over film and TV in its ability to let people play with poetry.

  Julie Taymor

  Play, Ideas, People

• People have become so literal because they're used to reality-based television.

  Julie Taymor

  Reality, People, Television

• Some of my ideas for film or theater come to me in dreams. I'm also very creative when I'm talking to others. I believe in collaboration.

  Julie Taymor

  Dream, Believe, Talking

• That's my policy - to be positive, to just hope that something will happen. If you start with all your fears, your receptivity is for the negative.

  Julie Taymor

  Being Positive, Negative, Policy

• When I'm working as a director, I might have an idea of my own but I'm also trying to get great ideas out of my actors. Directing is much more psychological - it's a lot like being a general. And you have to be organized. While you're making a film, you have between 2 and 500 people asking you a billion questions.

  Julie Taymor

  Ideas, People, Trying

• I believe that if you really have a strong idea, you can say, "What do you think? Let's see how my idea plays off yours."

  Julie Taymor

  Strong, Believe, Thinking

• When I'm sculpting, I work with wood and clay, and though some say that an image is already in the material and the sculptor just has to discover it, I also believe you have an image in your head that you're trying to get to. So you're in a dialogue with the piece, a back-and-forth.

  Julie Taymor

  Believe, Trying, Clay