Quotes About Interpretation

The problem with trying to make a film good and have it work for an audience is the problem of trying to tell a story well. The shape or the color of it doesn't matter.

It's great working with directors and with somebody else's vision.

I think I have much more appreciation for directing and movies overall versus a performance or an actor. Their body of work is more interesting.

The Bible, I've said it before, is a beautifully written work of fiction.

Yeah, the actors really come in as lumps of clay. We're ready to work with the directors and find our way. These guys really come in having done their work.

I don't like literal spaces, I don't like literal anything. I still like some kind of guess work but some pieces work and they just pop.

My work is largely concerned with relations between seeing and knowing, seeing and saying, seeing and believing.

The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.

I make movies just as painters paint: I work where I can.

When pieces of work speak to us in a way that feels as if they were made just for us, those become our private worlds that we return to.

When work resonates with a person, whether it is literature or film or music, then they want to know more about the artist. That's very natural.

Novelists are always resisting autobiographical readings of their work, because they know how false those can be.

News reporting is a cycle: No matter how much you work at sending a message, it's only successful if it's received.

I often use official documents or bureaucratic forms within my work. I find their structure and language style leaves a lot of room for poetry and my own interpretation.

However, some of my work is very subtle, and one should expect very subtle reactions to it.

Oh, I was never a very big Jim Woodring fan. I've never thought his work was that great.

Many artists I enjoy have a large body of work, and eventually the message is derived out from the sum of its parts.

I need there to be documentary photographers, because my work is meta-documentary; it is a commentary about the documentary use of photography.

I have always thought that the photographer does artistic work and that art consists of working with fictional premises.

The heart [of my work], the quintessential, remains the questioning of photographic truth. Be careful, be critical, doubt, and filter the information you receive.

To work with Kaz on this kind of project is a fascinating process...He seems to be Dogen himself when offering the translations that we Western collaborators then refine with him.

I've had to relearn how I work with people so that if and when I do avoid different things I don't send any messages in doing so.

A genuine work of art usually displeases at first sight, as it suggests a deficiency in the spectator.

One of the strategies for doing first-person is to make the narrator very knowing, so that the reader is with somebody who has a take on everything they observe.