Quotes About Subtext

I read an article once that said that when women have a conversation, they're communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they're actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person's body language.

the details gave the tone of the situation, the subtext without which the text could not be understood, and sharing this subtext with the reader was the natural tendency of reporters who, because of the nature of both the paper on which they worked and the city in which it was published, tended not to think of themselves as insiders.

The unseen is almost always underlined with the unsaid.

There. I've said everything I wanted to say without actually having to use the words please stay

Oh, don't you?" Nicholls raised one honey-colored brow at him and glanced briefly but meaningfully at Miss Woodford. His tone was jocular, but his look was not, and Grey wondered just how much Mr. Nicholls had had to drink. Nicholls was flushed of cheek and glittering of eye, but that might be only the heat of the room, which was considerable, and the excitement of the party

So much of writing is about what characters don't say, and in the early drafts, sometimes things get overwritten.

The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.

I think I am more attracted to characters with a subtext, whatever that is and they don't necessarily have to be virtuous, but they have to at least be human.

What I don't write is as important as what I write.

As coisas de que falamos o mais das vezes em tom de gracejo são geralmente, ao contrário, as que incomodam, mas não queremos mostrá-lo, com talvez a esperança inconfessada de uma vantagem suplementar: de justamente a pessoa com quem conversamos, ouvindo-nos gracejar daquilo, pensar que não é verdade.

There's no subtext in Harry Potter really; it's all magic, anything can happen. Why do I say this? Because it's a magic spell. It's quite nice in a way. There is a real freedom to it.

It was like hiking into a Hemingway story everything was sepia-toned and bristling with subtext.

I knew interpreting the emotional subtext in the speech and apperance of real humans was completely different from interpreting it in shows and serials. (For one thing, the shows and serials were trying to communicate with the viewer. As far as I could tell, real humans usually didn't know what the hell they were doing.)

the implication was there for anyone to hear.

Mi piace. Quando parlo con te mi sembra di essere più intelligente. Mi costringi a pensare.» «Pensare è una bella cosa» ha osservato Uman. «Pensare ci piace.» Quello che avevo detto era vero. Tutte le volte che ero con lui mi sentivo più intelligente, più acuta, più spiritosa. Mi sentivo tirata al limite. Le nostre conversazioni erano casuali, ma sotto la superficie ribolliva sempre qualcosa. Un «sottotesto», lo avrebbe probabilmente definito Uman.

dude — A passive-aggressive euphemism for "motherfucker." —The New Devil's Dictionary

So much of courtship is the unspoken.

How easily language makes one remember something that that language neither says nor wants to say and that would never occur to you, no matter what you are told.

Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else

The majority of important things cannot be said outright, they cannot be made explicit. They can only be implied.

The majority of important things cannot be said outright.

She understood as women often do more easily than men, that the declared meaning of a spoken sentence is only its overcoat, and the real meaning lies underneath its scarves and buttons.

las historias transportan emocionalmente al público, de modo que éste no se apercibe siquiera de que está recibiendo un mensaje oculto