Quotes About Interpretation

In my opinion, lyrics are a paramount factor and will always be.

There's a certain arrogance to an actor who will look at a script and feel like, because the words are simple, maybe they can paraphrase it and make it better.

Things parents say to children are oftentimes not heard, but in some cases you pick up on things that your parent would like to see you have done.

When you do a lyric for 'April in Paris,' those who have heard it before can hear it in a different way now. It can add perspective to a great piece of music that does not have a lyric and may be inaccessible to lot of ears because people don't deal with complex music very well.

For my part, it was Greek to me.

I would say in just about every investigation we have, there will be differences of opinion, where you have partial facts, as to what those facts mean.

I'm a participant in the doctrine of constructive ambiguity.

If you look back at the great classics and the epics and myths, they were for everyone. Different people got different things from them, but everyone was invited to participate.

I'm always interested to see what films are made of books. I kind of don't participate as a filmgoer in any kind of debate about what's better, the book or the movie. So I think it's interesting when people want to do it.

Movies alone have the hideous capacity to do everything for you. So in directing movies, you have to figure how to leave things out - because when you leave things out, you evoke the imaginative participation of the audience.

The greatest filmmakers are not the ones who put everything in; they're the ones who can figure things to leave out, and in doing so, invite your participation.

Proust is interested in minutiae because life, as he sees it, is seldom ever about things but about our impression of things, not about facts but about the interpretation of facts, not about one particular feeling but about a confluence of conflicting feelings. Everything is elusive in Proust because nothing is ever certain.

I don't write for a particular audience.

I think that The Eye is a particularly Americanized take on horror.

People always tell me my books are so dark; I don't think they're particularly dark. I'm not like that. I'm quite a cheerful soul.

Interestingly, although the 'Books of Blood' were greeted with cries of righteous horror - and smirks - I didn't think of them as being particularly excessive. God knows what I did think was excessive at the time, but I didn't think they were.

All national histories are partisan and designed to give us a good conceit of ourselves.

Classics isn't about the ancient world. It's partly about the ancient world, but it's about our conversation. It's how we try to talk to antiquity.

I have to visualise my jokes, live my jokes, feel the audience because every audience is different. It's like having a different dancing partner every night.

Anytime you take on a character... you just have to find the parts of the character that you can understand.

As actors, we need to do our parts exactly the way they have visualised it, because if we don't, we have to keep doing it many times over.

I love it when people send me body parts.

We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgement on the past.

My most interesting correspondence is with my translators. I marvel at their sensitivity over certain passages that just anyone, even if he knows German well, would not appreciate.