Quotes About Subtext

Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote.

What's great about writing a screenplay is that the subtext of the scene, what is not said, can sometimes be more important that what is said. Again, dialogue serves two basic functions in the scene: Either it moves the story forward or it reveals information about the character.

This was their way; a lot was said by saying nothing. She

Is there some kind of subtext to our current conversation? Because, as you might know, I am absolutely terrible with subtext. It gives me a headache." "You can't get headaches," "Well I can't get subtext either. Far too subtle for me.

What you don't write is often more important than what you do

To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text

The element of the unnamed and untouched became, between us, greater than any other.

After you've spent four years kissing somebody's perineum, the subtext talks louder than words.

There was something beneath the surface of things.

We didn't talk about Eric Mutis, but the effort of not talking about him made our actual words feel like fizz, just a lot of speedy emptiness.

What, after all, is a video game's subtextual preoccupation if not the erasure of mortality?

What after all, is a video game's subtextual preoccupation if not the erasure of mortality?

Albert shrugged, but Joseph could sense a world of things his uncle wasn't saying.

We actors can't say every line as if it has weight, but what we want to do is be true to the meaning of each line, whatever it is. Even the lines that are throwaway may come back later.

Where more is meant than meets the ear.

The Morgans always seemed to be having a second conversation—an unheard dialogue right next to the one they spoke aloud.

It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.

The thread of will-they-or-won't-they was the real driver of every word and glance and shift of body. So...this was a date, Blay thought. A subtextual negotiation slipcovered in talk of books read and music enjoyed.

Theatre is different. We can spend two weeks around a table talking about subtext. In opera, there is a score, and people already know their parts. And they move differently. I find all this liberating.

All the music I loved as a child, people thought it was junk. People were unaware of the subtext in so many of those records, but if you were a kid, you were just completely tuned in, even though you didn't always say - you wouldn't dare say it was beautiful.

The extreme formality with which he addresses these officers carries an important subtext: your problem, sir, is deciding what you want me to do, and my problem, sir, is doing it. My gung-ho posture says that once you give the order I'm not going to bother you with any of the details—and your half of the bargain is you had better stay on your side of the line, sir, and not bother me with any of the chickenshit politics that you have to deal with for a living.

The hip-hop guy nodded curtly, like he knew that, and despite appearances to the contrary, he had not been trippin', but had, in fact, been chillin' like a mo-fuckin' villain, so step the fuck off, wigga. He crossed against the light, limping slightly under the weight of the subtext.

He crossed against the light, limping slightly under the weight of the subtext.

I was being measured against the expectation that any feminist had to be unattractive in a conventional sense—and then described in contrast to that stereotype. The subtext was: If you could get a man, why would you need equal pay?