My memory of those places is better than my pictures. That's why I get much more satisfaction out of shooting thematic work that has to do with an idea that I'm searching for, or searching to express.
I'm not thinking in any big thematic or conceptual terms - especially in this book [Lincoln in the Bardo] when I was trying to make the voices more active, more energetic.
I've been doing photography in one form or another for, oh golly, over seventy years. I don't carry cameras. I used to. For many years I carried cameras wherever I went. Photograph whatever I saw that was of interest. In the last years, I've only used cameras to explore thematic ideas which presented themselves first. And then bring out the cameras to try to explore that idea.
Momentum, in literary mosaic, derives not from narrative but from the subtle, progressive buildup of thematic resonances.
I come from a musical family. Mom was a piano teacher for a large portion of her life, and Dad is a saxophone hobbyist who grew up in England during the heyday of Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott. I started taking piano lessons from my Mom, but it's too easy to slack off with your parent, so she passed me on to a friend of hers, where I got more motivated to play music by playing pop hits and TV themes. I did some classical training, but I was always more into the really thematic stuff.
Writing a story I am just trying to find some little interesting thing to start out with: something small, even trivial. Preferably something that doesn't have a lot of thematic or political baggage - a little crumb that is interesting.
I never have a thematic intention at the outset.
I never have a thematic intention at the outset. The story informs the theme for me rather than the other way around. But as it happens... this is, at least to a degree, about getting old and the rapid passage of our lives.
From [Nikolai] Medtner himself, who I do not think was the best possible advocate of his own works. But that's my opinion: I find him a little uninteresting and cold, sometimes. Also, at first, the thematic material is not of a kind that makes the greatest appeal, but if you keep with Medtner, I think he will take hold of you, and you're very likely to become a fan.
It's thematic in my career, if you look at most of my choices. It is some level of exploration of maternal angst and maternal heroism.
A lot of modern film scoring is about a lack of themes, so I try to find ways of using music that doesn't necessarily have thematic material in it to make the points when there is thematic material even stronger. It's cool to be able to combine old and new.
To me, feminism in literature deals with the female characters being in some way central to the thematic concerns of the book, or that they are agents of change to some degree. In other words, the lens is focused deeply and intensely on the female characters and doesn't waver, which allows for a glimpse into the rich inner lives of the characters.
California seemed to me to be all about secrets and the need for safety. And this leads to this thematic messiness I'm still trying to figure out what to do with. I mean, when it comes to the themes, this is nothing like an Atwood novel.
It is always just telling a story, regardless of the age of the reader. Except, if I'm writing something for kids, I know there has to be hope. I don't necessarily feel that responsibility for adults, but I emphatically feel it for children. That's the only difference. There's no syntax difference. There's no semantics difference. There's no thematic difference.
The presidents varied in the degree to which they cited the founders. Some, like JFK, LBJ, [Richard] Nixon, and [Bill] Clinton, cited them somewhat frequently, in the range of 100 to 200 times, though, regrettably, not in a thematic or notably profound or even interesting way. Others, like Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, cited them rarely.
The thematic core of X-Men is tolerance. It's that for those of us who are different in any way - in a big way - whether it's you're a minority, you're a woman, you're a Muslim, you are suppressed or marginalized; it can go the whole spectrum, but even if you are shy or you feel like an outsider, and X-Men are outsiders.
I think the idea that television has evolved to this place of real thematic richness and the fact that you no longer have to get 10 million people to watch your show in order to propagate its survival are the best things that have ever happened to storytelling in this medium.
I tend not to dwell on the parallels between chess and business, chess and the martial arts, or any two things for that matter, because the truth is that all pursuits are connected if we gain an eye for the thematic links.
The thematic, psychological, and cultural concerns of a writer are more relevant than whatever literary mode he or she chooses to deal with in any given novel.
Ambiguity is necessary in some of my stories, not in all. In those, it certainly contributes to the richness of the story. I doubt that thematic closure is never attainable.
The thematic links came a little later, after I noticed I was gravitating towards certain elements - war, city, weather. So it wasn't all planned out from the start, it came out of the process.
The movies that work are the ones in which somebody very smart figured out how to take all the thematic material, all the character material, all the filigree, all the beautiful writing, and put it into a story.
I look for a thematic idea running through my movies and I see that it's the outsider struggling for recognition. I realize that all my life I've been an outsider, and above all, being lonely but never realizing it.
London' is a gallery of sensation of impressions. It is a history of London in a thematic rather than a chronological sense with chapters of the history of smells, the history of silence, and the history of light. I have described the book as a labyrinth, and in that sense in complements my description of London itself.
I have traveled down this path before - 'List of Seven' and 'Twin Peaks' both have thematic similarities - but 'Paladin' took me much deeper into the intuitive underground. Always bearing in mind Joseph Campbell's Rule No. 1: When entering a labyrinth, don't forget your ball of twine.
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