It is as true for the writer as for the reader that any novel worth its ink should be an experience first and foremost - not an essay, not a statement, not an orderly rollout of themes and propositions.
I don't think writers really choose their subjects. I think the subjects, the topics, the themes, choose us, and then we make the most of what we have. For Trollope, society; for Roth, Jews. For me, apparently, love. Why hide it?
In almost all my work, I try to re-invent Christian images and stories and themes. You'd be amazed by the letters I get from young Christians who recognise this and enjoy it.
I started collecting aerial photographs of Native American and South Pacific architecture; only the African ones were fractal. And if you think about it, all these different societies have different geometric design themes that they use. So Native Americans use a combination of circular symmetry and fourfold symmetry.
People don't call them horror movies, but Hitchcock, for me, is my favorite storyteller. He was really exploring dark themes, and I don't know what category you put his movies in. Thriller? Horror? Some of them go in either one.
What I think was a really lucky coincidence was that a lot of the themes of 'Okja' are things I write about a lot: cognitive dissonance and corporate greed and also the internal politics of fringe groups.
I want readers turning pages until three o'clock in the morning. I want the themes of books to stick around for a reader. I'm always trying to find a way to balance characters and theme.
Even though 'Star Wars' takes place in another galaxy, a lot of the themes and things that characters deal with in terms of lessons that they're learning are things that are completely relatable to real life.
I do not use the language of my people. I can take liberties with certain themes which the Arabic language would not allow me to take.
Lyrically I like to use themes that make the listener use his or her imagination, and to give a little of the lessons I've learned in my own life.
Themes of redemption, temptation, and faith don't necessarily apply directly to religion. A lot of people find faith in their lives outside of God and still deal with notions of temptation and redemption that aren't religious.
Mr. Trump's election has caused a tectonic shift in advertising - just as it has in media more generally - and themes that might have once seemed innocuous or patriotic have suddenly become politically charged, controversial, and divisive.
I've always had the wish, the nostalgia to be able to write detective novels. At heart, the principal themes of detective novels are close to the things that obsess me: disappearance, the problems of identity, amnesia, the return to an enigmatic past.
There are millions and billions of atoms of memory of all kinds of musical themes in me.
My songs have always been frustrating themes, relationships that I've had. And now that I'm in love, I expect it to be really happy, or at least there won't be half as much anger as there was.
I've never written a book with an outline or a predetermined theme. It's only in retrospect that themes or subjects become identifiable. That's the fun of it: discovering what's next. I'm often surprised by plot developments I would not have dreamed of starting out, but that, in the course of the writing, come to seem inevitable.
Because kids are physically smaller, there's an assumption by people who haven't read a kids' book for a long time that their ideas and themes and problems and ambitions must be commensurately smaller and less important. I would venture that sometimes the opposite is true.
I used to love comic books, and I love American comedy, and neither are afraid to tackle big themes.
I think less is more. Sephora has these nude themes, which is like 'no make-up' make-up.
The whole thing about making films in an organic film on location is that it's not all about characters, relationships and themes, it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across.
The weak economy, widening income inequality, gridlock in Congress and a presidential election: Those were perhaps the dominant economic and political themes of 2012.
I'm a big believer in 'Trojan horses' - There are certain themes that are more palatable when wrapped in something fun or distracting.
I write to try to find out who I am. One of my main themes is manliness. I think I'm trying to figure out what manliness really is.
What I think of as 'freakonomics' is mostly storytelling around an idea - not a theme but an idea. I like ideas much more than themes. Themes are boring. Themes are, 'Wool is back,' but ideas are, 'Why is wool back?'
The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern.
Like Rodgers and Hammerstein, I'm not afraid to deal with themes about the ups and downs of life, yet which are still entertaining, and you still feel these stories.
I was the Playmate editor for 'Playboy' for two years. I produced two years' worth of centerfolds. I did everything on that, from picking the girls to designing the sets to picking the wardrobe, coming up with themes, assigning the photographer, down to editing the photos and approving the retouching.
Barack Obama's historic 2008 presidential campaign touched on all the themes I have covered throughout my career and all of the layers of meaning that run through black politics. Ambition. Aspiration. Fear. Folly. It was all on display as Obama boarded the roller coaster that ultimately led to the White House.
The themes that make one laugh always stem from poverty, hunger, misery, old age, sickness, and death. These are the themes that make Italians laugh, anyway.
