Quotes About Meaning

I'm not rigid about directorial changes: I judge them on a case-by-case basis. In the case of a play whose text is widely familiar, I'm open to drastic changes that may alter the author's meaning, perhaps even considerably. If the results don't work, then I say so.

In film lyrics, I avoid Persianised words because they are not widely understood.

A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist's role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him.

I've never believed much in that holding hands kind of love. I've always thought that love is about two different personalities trying to confront life, trying to make sense of their responsibilities, to themselves, to each other, and to the wider society.

Words can have no single fixed meaning. Like wayward electrons, they can spin away from their initial orbit and enter a wider magnetic field. No one owns them or has a proprietary right to dictate how they will be used.

The reason I think the shows I do are successful with a wider public is because they tap into something that's beyond dance and is about being told a story. That's what people want.

In 2014, when my wife, Courtney, was expecting our daughter and we were contemplating a name, I said, 'How about Finley?' Only after Courtney said that she loved the name did I reveal that it was inspired by an aspect of Samuel Finley Brown Morse.

It would mean a lot, but it's weird, because what's the title? It's an extra line on your Wikipedia page and a medal that says you won on that particular night. It obviously symbolizes more than that, but those are the things people think about.

There is much to life than fame and fortune. If you are a part of the entertainment industry, please remember it is all temporary.

I never give in to the temptation to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult. That would be too ridiculous.

If the rules of a language are followed, words usually make sense. But these very rules can stir the impulse to rebel. We're obliged to keep trying to convey meaning through correct sentences. After a while, the good-soldier rigidity of polished prose can begin to seem dull, and it gets harder to resist the temptation of nonsense.

There is a temptation for an actor to editorialize what they're doing. And you can't do that with Pinter. It's almost like a musical score. His lines are so specific, but they can mean different things to different people, like an alternating current.

We all want merit to mean something, and we all may be tempted to reduce that meaning to something measurable and concrete like an SAT score. The reality, though, is that who deserves entry into an institution depends on what the institution exists to do.

I'm very much Israeli and American; I never was tempted to change my name. Some people suggested I should have a different name, and I said absolutely not. That's the name I inherited, and it's meaningful: Israel is on every cake that I present.

The littlest thing can have the strongest connection when you're grieving. Your Proustian, poetic nerve is turned up to ten.

Perspective in art has receded along with harmony in music: We tend more and more to see the world as a heap of intrinsically meaningless fragments.

I don't eschew autobiographical writing, but I'm not interested in mine to be so straightforward. The things that tend to move me the most are often those that I have to figure out its meaning for myself. The human being's ability to make a metaphor to describe a human experience is just really cool.

The very special place that a language occupies among institutions is undeniable, but there is much more to be said-, a comparison would tend rather to bring out the differences.

I tend to write songs that are about something pretty specific. A lot of them tell some kind of little made-up story.

When people express what is most important to them, it often comes out in cliches. That doesn't make them laughable; it's something tender about them. As though in struggling to reach what's most personal about them they could only come up with what's most public.

When I was young, my mother said to me, 'Momma loves her little son.' Now, this tender endearment holds a firm meaning within my life, inside my spirit. It reminds me that in sharing love, it grows that much greater in our hearts.

'Ikiru' is existential but with a lot of tenderness.

If we're talking about masculinity and tenderness, I don't look at Clinton.

The silent film has a lot of meanings. The first part of the film is comic. It represents the burlesque feel of those silent films. But I think that the second part of the film is full of tenderness and emotion.