Fiction isn’t made by scraping the bones of topicality for the last shreds and sinews, to be processed into mechanically recovered prose. Like journalism, it deals in ideas as well as facts, but also in metaphors, symbols and myths.
I loved the myths of ancient Greece and Egypt.
I’m not certain that I draw from any one culture more than others. Many myths and legends of many different cultures are really the same story when you get to the heart of it. They are often cultural cautionary tales about how we should behave and how we should live.
My first mentor and inspiration was my Irish Dancing teacher Patricia Mulholland. She created her own form of dance known as Irish ballet and created stage productions of old Irish myths and legends. They were my first experiences on stage. She told my mum I was destined for the stage, and I took that as my cue.
American movies are often very good at mining those great underlying myths that make films robustly travel across class, age, gender, culture.
If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.
I have always been fascinated by the supernatural elements in stories, whether fairy tales, myths, film or literature.
I find increasingly that the more extreme are the things going on in your life, the more cultural reference points fail you. More mythical reference points actually help, and you realise that’s what myths are for. It’s for human beings to process their experience in extremis.
If you look back at the great classics and the epics and myths, they were for everyone. Different people got different things from them, but everyone was invited to participate.
True friendships don’t fade in Hollywood, as so many myths about show business would have you insist.
I think of evolution as a myth, like the Norse myths, the Greek myths – anybody’s myths. But it was created for a rational age.
We are used to thinking of Amazon myths in terms of violence against uppity women, but the ancient evidence also reveals a vision of gender equality.
Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.
Folk tales and myths, they’ve lasted for a reason. We tell them over and over because we keep finding truths in them, and we keep finding life in them.
I decided to write about the myths of divorce.
The dogma of woman’s complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind.
Mythology works… because Indians have been bred on myths.
Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.
Have you ever held a snake? They are so strong. You can see why there are so many myths about them: they are unlike any other creature. It’s extraordinary how that little brain can keep everything moving in different directions.
The logical man must either deny all miracles or none, and our American Indian myths and hero stories are perhaps, in themselves, quite as credible as those of the Hebrews of old.
India has a long tradition of reinterpreting religious myths.
I’m a big fan of the misunderstood, the vilified, the underdog, the breaking of myths.
As I work, I see my writing – each scene, each chapter, each section, each book – in three-act structures and classic myths, and I analyze them through the handy filter of the detective story.
It is no coincidence that so many religious beliefs date back to times when no science could possibly have accounted satisfactorily for many of the natural phenomena inspiring scripture and myths.
Myths about the dire effects of genetically modified foods on health and the environment abound, but they have not held up to scientific scrutiny. And, although many concerns have been expressed about the potential for unexpected consequences, the unexpected effects that have been observed so far have been benign.
We’re not able to hide behind myths of this being a post-racial society because Donald Trump has outlined exactly how a large portion of America feels.
The more real things get, the more like myths they become.
I truly appreciate the special qualities that America and American national myths offer me.
I believe in all of these Irish myths, like leprechauns. Not the pot of gold, not the Lucky Charms leprechauns. But maybe was there something in the traditional sense? I believe that this stuff came from somewhere other than people’s imaginations.
All great political families have myths: stories they tell themselves about how history happened.
Information and inspiration are everywhere… history, art, architecture, everything an illustrator needs. Europe is, after all, the land that has generated most of the enduring myths and legends of Western culture.
The reason that I like to use classical myths as models is because African American writers and African American stories are usually understood as occurring in some kind of vacuum – because of slavery.
Myths give us our sense of personal identity, answering the question, ‘Who am I?’
Myths are a waste of time. They prevent progression.
When I was a kid, my grandparents were Greek immigrants on my father’s side. My grandfather used to read me Greek myths, in which there are a great many goddesses and stories of strong women. And I was entranced by them. Then I started reading science fiction very young, and I loved it.
Greek myths, early Roman history, is configured around violence against women. And I think we need to get in there, get our hands dirty, face it, and see why and how it was.
I intend to explode the myths about myself and get down to the real truth about the legend that is Batman.
There are a lot of myths about gay people.
One of the hardiest myths in British public life is that there is a conspiracy of silence on immigration. Liberals and leftists, it is alleged, have bandied together to prevent debate or discussion of ‘mass immigration’ into the U.K., caused by Labour’s ‘open door’ policies.
I stick closely to the structure of the myths. I may have some fun with the mythology by changing the environment to modern-day, but the structure of the myths, the monsters, the relationships of the gods – none of that is made up.
Since the Greek myths, the greatest stories are premised on the idea of, ‘A stranger arrives.’
Myths are stories that explain a natural phenomenon. Before humans found scientific explanations for such things as the moon and the sun and rainbows, they tried to understand them by telling stories.
Texas is so wrapped up in myth and legend, it’s hard to know what the state and its people are really about. Real Texans, raised on these myths and legends, sometimes become legends themselves.
As I detail in my new book: ‘Hard Measures, How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives,’ there are many myths surrounding the detention of a relatively small number of top terrorists at CIA-run ‘black sites’ from 2002 until they were sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth in the world.
One of the myths you see in entrepreneurship is that people have this dream one night, wake up the next morning, and start building it. It’s actually much more of an iterative process.
Truth is, I’ve spent much of my life trying, unsuccessfully, to explode the myths about Texas.
What is the consequent effect on a society of beings looking for themselves in the myths on the screen? It’s safe to say that they have failed us, but I can’t help it… I love Movies.
If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.
There are so many myths about us.
One of the big myths about philanthropy is that it’s all about donating funds for a cause. I like to look at it quite differently. Philanthropy is about ‘giving’ – not just in monetary terms but also in non-monetary aspects, like time, ideas, or being a volunteer. Donating money is just a small part of philanthropy.
Horrors, I believe, should be original – the use of common myths and legends being a weakening influence.
It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.
One of the myths about Dad was that he was mean. That simply wasn’t true. I always found him generous to a fault but he wasn’t reckless with his money, which was rather rare in Hollywood. He’d grown up with nothing and he wasn’t about to fritter it all away.
I’m extremely into Greek Mythology and know almost everything about the classic Greek myths.
I just had a hunch that there might be kernels of truth or reality – scientific or historical reality – in stories about nature that are perpetuated in oral myths. That’s how I got interested in it.
