Quotes About Subtlety

Well, anytime I make a movie, I like to load it up with more things than you could ever catch on the first viewing.

People are much more complicated in real life, but my characters are as subtle and nuanced as I can make them. But if you say my characters are too black and white, you've missed the point. Villains are meant to be black-hearted in popular novels. If you say I have a grey-hearted villain, then I've failed.

The trick to being a novelist is to act like an iceberg. Make it seem as if you're displaying only one-tenth of what you know, and the other nine-tenths isn't visible and never mind if that part is pure styrofoam!

Facts are often faint and flickering. They are the achievements of subtle investigations that must painstakingly stabilize evanescent effects or ingeniously combine several strands of evidence into a strong, weight-bearing cord. Above all, as their etymology suggests, [...] the most interesting and useful facts are not given but made, artifacts in the best sense of the word.

I see you know your art. Yes. Not many realize that it's the play of light and dark, of subtleties and extremes—

To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill.

Commandment 10: When observing others, be subtle about it.

Simplicity, carried to an an extreme, becomes elegance.

Practise in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought.

Translation is always a treason, and as a Ming author observes, can at its best be only the reverse side of a brocade- all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of colour or design.

We all desire to be understood, but no one enjoys being obvious.

We desire to understand the world by giving names to the things we see, but these things are only the effects of something subtle.

The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.

It's always fun to layer a character, to make the character a little bit more dynamic than it is on paper.

To say more, is to say less.

I usually go with the 'less is more' approach.

Basically, less is more when it comes to film.

I always think less is more.

Art lies by its own artifice.

If I'm just trying to play it cool, a nude lip always goes a long way.

Well, I think one of the main things that you have to think about when acting in the movies is to try not to make the acting show.

I'm very good at manipulation.

I mean, it's very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.

But there was more. Did she know I had noticed? I had made no outward sign. But I had noticed. Today Miss Winter had said I.