Best 62 quotes of Julie Taymor on MyQuotes

Americans are attracted to the dark side. But which movies should be allowed to be violent and show that dark side, and which should not? I don't believe in censorship, but I do think there are horrible movies that are bad for you.

Americans in particular are myopic. They're not traveling as much. When you were a college student, the next thing you would do on graduation was to take a year off and travel. That's what I did. I went to Indonesia.

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

And I just think that to introduce an unknown Shakespeare is thrilling, too - not to do Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, to do the richer Shakespeare. People will come to this and not know the story.

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

Because my parents had given me tremendous respect, trust, and freedom as a child, I knew how to take responsibility for myself. If you're constantly being told "No, don't do that" or "We don't trust you," you can't develop that responsibility.

But I don't think there has ever been anything written on the nature of violent man as deep and as thorough as Shakespeare's Titus. I think it puts all modern movies and modern exploitations of violence to shame.

Children have an easier ability to tap into the surreal than adults do, in a funny kind of way.

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 two and 500 people asking you a billion questions.

Going to the Far East was my first eye-opener to a world vastly different from my own. Then when I was 16 I lived in Paris for a year and studied mime. At 21 I went to Indonesia. I had planned to go for three months, but I stayed four years. I just got lost in the culture.

Growing up I had amazing parents who really let me be creative and free. I was the youngest of three by six years, the child who was the outsider and observer. When I went off to Boston to act, I was very young - 10. And my parents didn't fear that. They had the respect to let me make my choices.

I am creative in my living space - the designer in me helps that out.

I am, to be quite honest, sick of hero stories.

I call myself a playmaker sometimes - but that's just a word. I don't feel like I have to have a title or a job description.

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.

I have directed good actors and have gone through the process which is more detailed in theater in a way. You have to get people to stay for two or three hours in a performance. They need more talk and rehearsal than in films.

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.

I lived in Indonesia for four years and I understand trance and magic and where it comes from.

I love directing Shakespeare on film. It's fantastic that the actors would do exactly the same thing and be true to their part.

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

I'm not going to spend two years on a film or four years on an opera if I don't feel like I can put my own self into it. That doesn't mean it has to be about myself.

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.

In a way, artists are shamans, facilitators who take what's there, channel it through themselves, then put it out there for people to appreciate.

I really do believe that if you don't challenge yourself and risk failing, that it's not interesting.

I received from my experience in Japan an incredible sense of respect for the art of creating, not just the creative product. We're all about the product. To me, the process was also an incredibly important aspect of the total form.

I saw bubbling lava, and at the same moment I saw a reflection of a certain kind of inner turmoil. Because at the moment I looked into that crater, I slipped, and a large piece of volcanic rock took a hole out of my leg. The scar is still there 20, 30 years later. But it's one of those things that reminds you of the kind of risk or the kind of moment in order to push yourself.

I think that both musicals and opera have a capacity to get to an inner emotional landscape.

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.

It's people who are repressed and cannot express their fears that are dangerous.

I use cinematic things in a theatrical way on stage, and in film I use theatrical techniques in a cinematic way.

I've had male executives say that my lead character was unlikable because she slept with a lot of guys.

I've never been a puppeteer, I conceive and I write and I design and I direct. And not just puppets. I direct actors, I direct dancers, I direct singers, I direct films. I also direct puppeteers. I'm really a theatre maker, but there's not a word for that.

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.

Limitations force you to find the essence of what you want to say, which is one of the most important things to know for an artist.

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.

My God, it transformed me. My life changed.

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.

One of the reasons I love to jump back and forth between mediums is that film does allow me to be more literal. I can go to the real place. I can go to the Coliseum, and I don't have to fake it.

One of the reasons why I love to do Shakespeare is that this great artist was able to talk to a wide variety of audiences. He could do the bawdy plays and the humor and the clowns-as you know, because you're a wonderful Stephano-that speaks to the populace, the masses, the groundlings, whatever.

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

People will justify whatever for a good cause.

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.

Some people become dullards, but as children we are all creative. It's in the programming, the socialization, that we lose our sense of play.

Spider-Man is a genuine American myth with a dark, primal power, but it's also got this great superhero, and - hey! - he can fly through the theater at 40 miles an hour. It's got villains, it's got skyscrapers, it's colorful, it's Manhattan. I knew it would be a challenge, but I saw the inherent theatricality in it, and I couldn't resist.

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.

Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.

The idea that all violence in movies is okay simply because it happens is bull. Directors and writers have a responsibility.

There is incredible power in the arts to inspire and influence.

We have often been attracted to the story of the other, the outcast. And he and I just loved working together, so it just kept happening, and our relationship is completely bound up with our work. We enjoy each other's art.

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.