Quotes About Interpretation

Of course, when you work on a character, you try to understand her. You feel that everything she does has a reason.

You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don't.

W]hat makes a work of art 'good' for you is not something that is already 'inside' it, but something that happens inside you.

It's fun to see how other artists adapt my work.

I love illustrating for other writers because I am given stories I never would have thought of, and my work as an illustrator is always in support of the story.

So many paintings have hidden meanings or need wall texts, but my work is not in that category.

Once biographical information contaminates your consciousness, it's impossible to erase it and look at someone's work the same way again.

Probably, if we looked at Da Vinci or Michelangelo with care, we'd see a historical particularity that the work is not treated as having. It's certainly true of Shakespeare.

As an actor I suppose you're constantly observing. I don't sit in restaurants making notes, I don't live my life in order to then feed it into my work.

One of the reasons poetry is such an amazing genre to work with is because it constantly reinvents itself and re-negotiates its terms with the reader.

I think ballads transcend better into my work when I remix something.

I like to work around identification for the audience, and when there's a grown-up or a moral figure or something like that, people tend to go there.

A body of work may be reviled - mostly by those who have no knowledge of its workings - and yet still carry elements of what can only be considered eternal truths.

Engaging and well paced, the book fills in the reality behind Vonnegut's work

I think substitution is a huge part of acting, but I don't personalise my work that much.

There are a lot of filmmakers I love whose work doesn't inspire mine at all. For example: Quentin Tarantino. From his films you can see that he has a wicked sense of humour, and I love that!

Every work of art should give utterance, or indicate, the awful blind strength and the cruelty of the creative impulse, that is why they must all have what are called errors, both of taste and style.

Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.

A great work of art is one that continues to repay attention.

When I see people talking on the internet about me or my work it's almost always more a description of themselves and so I never really think of myself as anything more than just who I always was.

My work doesn't have the same rules as, say, Andy [Warhol]'s work. But it's gathered together for the simple reason that we all worked with the images and objects around us.

The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.

You can't tell people how to feel when they read your work. You can only hope to connect.

The impact of any particular writer on your own work is hard to discern.