Quotes About Interpretation

You don't have to be Pope Julius to have great art in your house.

When someone drew a picture of Pope John wearing an Avis 'We try harder' button, those words no longer meant which car rental to patronize, and yet some of the overtones from its original meaning are there and make a contribution to the new situation.

Once you have somebody that is telling you, 'We are interpreting God for you,' it seems like you either agree or you don't. You either say, like Martin Luther, 'I'm going to have a direct relationship with the word of God,' or I'm going to go through a conduit of God on Earth,' which would be the Pope.

I approach things from my feeling first. I have to get a feel for the character. I'll do that through music; I'll do it through what is naturally popping up for me when I read the script. My ideas or whatever the occupation of the character might be.

I have a huge note on my phone where things just start popping up. It doesn't make that much sense to me at the time, but once a song is finished, I can read into it and figure out who the characters are in my life.

What is the most popular scene in the Bible? Adam and Eve biting the apple. It's not there.

Popular and good and bad is not the same thing.

When you're telling stories, you are actually trying to illuminate some portion of the truth in an artful way. The story may immediately seem to be a lie, but it's like an impressionistic painting - you see the light and the color better than you would with a photo-realistic piece.

What Jerry has done, in a masterful way, is go through and select portions of the Scripture and put words in Jesus' mouth that are legitimate because they already appear in the Bible.

When having my portrait painted I don't want justice, I want mercy.

Not only are Christians writing about Jesus, but also Communists, Jews, atheists and agnostics are taking up their pens to paint a portrait of Jesus.

When I paint a person, his enemies always find the portrait a good likeness.

What I find really interesting is, whenever you see the person who gives you the portrait of yourself, the portrait seems to be a combination of their face and your face.

That's what I paint, I paint people. They're portraits, but you won't always be pleased with the way you look in my paintings. Which is fine, I guess. Unless you're buying it, and it's of your kid!

The characters I portray are an extension of what I've seen, heard, or read, and so what you see in my films are how I understand life.

As a dancer, when you're moving, you're listening to music so much because you're trying to portray it with your body. You're dissecting a song way more than anyone would actually think you are.

Although this is a fictitious story the history is real. You don't want to re-write history but you certainly want to portray events and characters as realistically as you can.

Of course you can find something exciting and dynamic in any character you want to portray.

Even if I make fun of him, I try to portray him as a human being. Sometimes because he's the great Jean-Luc Godard, we see him as a concept.

Whether you need to like a character, I don't think that's necessary in order to portray him.

What we portray on the ice is really important to us, and we love getting into character and telling a story.

Drama is not a literal portrayal of events. It's a depiction, it's impressionistic.

You have to add something of yourself to the portrayal.

Gene Hackman's portrayal of Lex Luthor did not exist in comic books. This is not my Lex Luthor, but I really like it.