The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read.

Lascelles Abercrombie

In the ancient times, bards went around singing the epics, which were storehouses of philosophy.

Amish Tripathi

Historically, epics are set in Africa or Asia or the Wild West, but if you make an epic today it's hard to disassociate from the contemporary realities of those places.

Baz Luhrmann

I've always loved the old epics that tell a simple emotional story, whether it's the tumultuous relationship between Rhett and Scarlett or Lawrence of Arabia's passion to get lost in a faraway place.

Baz Luhrmann

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.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

What do I geek out about? What am I? Hmmm. I love movies. I watch movies. I like big, sweeping epics, like Ed Zwick stuff: 'The Last Samurai,' 'Legends of the Fall,' 'Blood Diamond,' 'Glory.'

Chris Evans

New platforms are emerging: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Xbox. And film actors are gravitating towards television, because there are basically better roles there. Television is making the kind of epics and genres that the movie studios used to make, and often doing it better with more complex narratives and corresponding budgets.

David S. Goyer

When people think of biblical movies, they imagine sweeping epics like 'The Ten Commandments.' But 'The Gospel According to St. Matthew' is essentially a documentary about Jesus. It made me aware of how real life and personal experience can create more breathtaking, sensitive cinema than more sophisticated techniques.

Derek Cianfrance

Lots of science fiction deals with distant times and places. Intrepid prospectors in the Asteroid Belt. Interstellar epics. Galactic empires. Trips to the remote past or future.

Edward M. Lerner

What kind of hard SF do I write? Everything from near-future, Earth-centric techno-thrillers to far-future, far-flung interstellar epics.

Edward M. Lerner

Language as a communication tool is the primary element from which literature is created. Even in pre-literate societies, it exists as songs, riddles, or epics that are chanted.

F. Sionil Jose

My specialties are corpses, unconscious people and people snoring in spectacular epics.

Gig Young

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

I love the opportunity to do lots of different kinds of projects - independent films and big studio epics as well. I'd love to be able to do a mixture.

Holliday Grainger

I didn't need to write historical epics, no, or science fiction, though I read a lot of science fiction as a kid and rather liked it. But I didn't have the mentality.

John Updike

My wife, Lisa, and I both grew up on wuxia - Chinese historical romances. They're kind of analogous to Western epics. They're based on history, just like 'the Iliad' and 'the Odyssey' are based on history, but they're romanticized, and a lot of fantasy elements have been added.

Ken Liu

The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read.

Lascelles Abercrombie

I am not against songs in films. We come from an oral tradition of storytelling. I have grown up listening to epics in oral rendition and oral rendition always had music.

Mani Ratnam

When you're making this kind of music, you don't need a producer. If you're making pop albums or trying to write hit singles, then yeah, but if you're writing 20-minute prog epics, as long as you know how to make it sound good, and you have a good mixer, that's all you need.

Mike Portnoy

I've done all these historical epics and chivalrous roles, but there's an odder, quirkier side to me that nobody knows about.

Orlando Bloom

Stone Age. Bronze Age. Iron Age. We define entire epics of humanity by the technology they use.

Reed Hastings