Quotes About Interpretation

I like to create the music I hear in my interior. As a conductor, you have the ability to squeeze the sounds and interpretation you asked for from 50 to 80 people.

I would say that maybe directors who act as well are easier with actors. I'm not saying that all directors have this, but sometimes you'll come across a director who sort of looks at an actor a bit like a kind of untrained horse that's been let out of the stable, like they might buck him.

Furthermore, even if ideas were gettable - say, stacked in a secluded cave like the Dead Sea scrolls - I wouldn't go there. An 'idea,' especially one adhered to from start to finish, can be disastrous for a compelling piece of fiction.

I mean, the thing with Simple Minds is that there's many Simple Minds within Simple Minds. There was definitely an electronic art-rock phase; a lot of people associate us with the big MTV pop age. Other people you talk to and they say 'Oh, Simple Minds are stadium rock.' I'll say, 'Hang on a minute, I think it can be all those things.'

Sometimes, you have a hunch and then you find numbers that substantiate that, it makes either the staff or the players say, 'OK, let's fix that.'

I don't know what happens to me on stage. Something else seems to take over.

If you are ever on stage, and it feels as though the audience is not laughing at the right points or are not quite as engaged as you'd hope, you have to remember there is always somebody who might be falling in love with this world and having an epiphany. I was that person.

The ability to absorb a book and make someone else's words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.

Usually, if you read a script by somebody else and there's a dense page of stage directions, people just skip through it or speed read it.

Everything you do on stage is always a response to something, not the next line.

From the very early stage when I started doing performance art in the '70s, the general attitude - not just me, but also my colleagues - was that there should not be any documentation, that the performance itself is artwork and there should be no documentation.

I immerse myself right into my character whether or not I'm relating to people live as an actor on stage or whatever.

'What's the Use' is normally done with all the women onstage with Julie. Sometimes it's staged as a 'lay at my feet, dear children, and let me tell you the ways of life.' We felt like that wasn't really what was going on.

I hope for quick, fluent copy and memorable pictures. The words would not 'describe' the pictures; the pictures would not 'illustrate' the words. Together, they would carry a stamp and tell a story.

I don't care if it's somebody else's song. Most of the time, you'll find that I'll put my own stamp on it. But I started writing more because, you know, it's easy to regurgitate what somebody else is doing, but it's exciting to be able to come up with your own writing.

In some ways, what I learned is that you can take a character and breathe with them, and it's up to the audience to interpret rather than you putting moral stamp on the character.

I'd love to work with any director who has their own artistic vision, their own stamp, and who believes in that.

Definition of a Statistician: A man who believes figures don't lie, but admits than under analysis some of them won't stand up either.

Every constitutional standard is engaged in difficult but important line-drawing.

For Cantonese - because there's no standardized pinyin system - I have to have someone read it to me, and then I rewrite the whole script in my own Cantonese pinyin.

I would love to do an album of standards!

People think jazz music is all standards and the Great American Songbook. But it's really about the sensibility, the feel you bring to the music.

Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.

I listen to music all the time, and a lot of the things I cover are the standards of my time, and they work for me.