Quotes About Subtext

You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it.

I don't even know if I always entirely get what I'm trying to say right away with lyrics. I like a lot of things that are more subtext. I grew up mishearing lyrics my whole life, but somehow there's so much more, too, that's implied in vocal delivery and the music itself and the gestural quality of it.

Power's not a chalice. It's a hammer. And it only does one thing. Power smashes. The subtext of all power is extortion. It's always the threat of force, of imprisonment, the threat of death. Always."

I hate exposition and superfluous dialogue. I hate when dialogue is trying to explain or patronize or finger-point.

The Playwright had long been fascinated by the strange mercurial personality of the Actor. What is acting. and why do we respond to great acting as we do? We know that an actor is acting and yet - we wish to forget that an actor is acting, and in the presence of talented actors we quickly do forget. This is a mystery, a riddle. How can we forget the actor acts? Is the actor acting on our behalf? Is the subtext of the actor's acting always and forever our own buried (and denied) acting?

With Dan you have to listen to his underneath, you know? Not so much what he says.

We can't be direct, so we end up saying the weirdest things.

Thus the elaborate web of rules, which, if followed to the letter, would paralyze human life entirely, is equally elaborately unraveled by Manu through the escape clauses. Every knot tied in one verse is untied in another verse; the constrictive fabric that he weaves in the central text he unweaves in the subtext of apad, as Penelope in Homer's Odyssey carefully unwove at night what she had woven in the day.

When people ask what 'American Pie' is about, they're missing the point. The song isn't about the lines themselves - it's about what is between the lines. The song is about what isn't there.

Every movie has the thing it's about, and then, deep down, it has this thing that it's really about. 'Star Wars' is not really about a space opera, action, and the galactic quest. It's about self-doubt.

Occasionally, you'll get a 'District 9,' a film that is politically charged, but there is nothing going on beneath the surface with a lot of horror films. They are not about anything.

If you actually dissect the lyrics in 'Motley Crue', you'll notice that there's a lot going on beneath the surface.

I think the films that work the best are the ones that seem to be about one thing but then, under the surface, bubbling away, are lots more important questions that you're not really aware of, and when you leave the cinema, your mind is ablaze with different thoughts!

Scarcely anything in literature is worth a damn except what is written between the lines.

The unsaid, for me, exerts great power.

Lahiri's characters, just like people all around us, are constantly telling each other important things, but not necessarily in words.

I watched that film the other night and it embarrassed me. So dated, so coy, so evasively homosexual only a fellow homosexual might recognize the subtext.

All good writing leaves something unexpressed.

For me really good acting is about subtext.

You can sing if you have a great voice, but to connect that instrument to the text and connect it to the subtext, what lies underneath and the emotion, is indeed a rare talent.

You can say a lot of things to someone while being pretty clear between the lines.

The thing I don't want to do as a film composer is reiterate. I prefer to subtextualize or to underline rather than to say, 'This is what you should be feeling.'

La Grandeza existe; como mucho, coexiste. Su subtexto es que se joda el contexto.

Sometimes," Perry said, "saying nothing can be your strongest weapon.") Juliet, and perhaps Juliet alone, had begun to sense Godfrey's impatience. She had learned to read between the lines. But wasn't that where the most important things were said?