Deren Quotes & Sayings

Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings. — Gerald Durrell

Artists are interested in pictures as sources of ideas for their work. Where the pictures come from and how they are made is of little concern to them. — Van Deren Coke

Myth is the facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter. — Maya Deren

The universe was once conceived as the passive stage upon which the dramatic conflict of human wills was enacted and resolved. Today man has discovered that that which seemed simple and stable is, instead, complex and volatile; his own inventions have put into motion new forces, toward which he has yet to invent a new relationship. Unlike Ulysses, he can no longer travel over a universe stable in space and time to find adventures; nor can he solve intimate antagonisms with an adversary sportingly suitable in stature. Rather, each individual is the center of a personal vortex; and the aggressive variety and enormity of the adventures which swirl about and confront him are unified only by his personal identity.... The integrity of the individual identity is counterpointed to the volatile character of a relativistic universe. — Maya Deren

Facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter,' as my friend the late Maya Deren once phrased the mystery. — Joseph Campbell

I am not greedy. I do not seek to possess the major portion of your days. I am content if, on those rare occasions whose truth can be stated only by poetry, you will, perhaps, recall an image, even only the aura of my films. — Maya Deren

This fantasy about the disposability of black life is a constant in American history. — Teju Cole

It is not at all coincidental that Darwinian psychology has the same difficulty explaining the unity and integration of human reasoning as Darwinian biology has explaining the unity and integration of irreducibly complex functions. Practical and theoretical reasoning is often irreducibly complex. A given argument has several well-matched, interacting reasons, and the removal of any one of them makes the argument break down. — Angus J.L. Menuge

I like too many different kinds of movies to only want to do one kind. — David Robert Mitchell

And what more could I possibly ask as an artist than that your most precious visions, however rare, assume sometimes the forms of my images. — Maya Deren

My favorite film is "Meshes in the Afternoon," a short avant garde film directed by Maya Deren. This was the first film that I saw that was actually directed by a woman. — Chris Hegedus

As the possibilities for straightforward photography seem to have become exhausted it has been the photographers who know about the history of art, not simply the history of photography, who have shaped important directions for the future. — Van Deren Coke

The way back is always shorter. — Maya Deren

Throughout the history of art it has been art itself - in all its forms - that has inspired art ... today's photographs are so geared to life that one can learn more from them than from life itself. — Van Deren Coke

Art is actually based on the notion that if you would really celebrate an idea or a principle, you must think, you must plan, you must put yourself completely in the state of devotion, and not simply give the first thing that comes to your head — Maya Deren

The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls. — Maya Deren

I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick, — Maya Deren

He must have stood there for a long time, making a list of all the terrible things he had done - almost killinng me was one of those thingss - and another list of all the good, heroic, brave things he had not done, and then decided that he was tired. Tired, not just of living, but of existing. Tired of being Al. — Veronica Roth

It is not morbidity which draws crowds to scenes of disaster or unusual joy. It is the desire to participate in a moment when life breaks through to some higher level of intensity so that one's own life might take fire from that sudden spurted flame. — Maya Deren

There is always something for which there is no accounting. Take, for example, the whole world. — Leonard Michaels

I would want to create an amphitheater outside of California where I would play everyday, and then people would have to come to me. I would create all this crazy stage decor and film it. Or I would just stay inside my home and do films. I would be like the modern Maya Deren. — Lykke Li

Use your freedom to experiment with visual ideas. — Maya Deren

I was inspired by Maya Deren because she was the first woman filmmaker whose films I saw. I also loved Fellini and Goddard because they were so different from Hollywood films. But when I saw the cinema verite films that were made by Drew Associates with Leacock and Pennebaker I found my passion. — Chris Hegedus