Quotes About Interpretation

I think my family sees me playing a pastor on TV and thinks that's a way of saying I have the calling, too.

Pastors need to know what's going on in the world and what has been going on for 4,000 years. We need a way to read Scripture which is imaginative, interpretive.

If you look around us, there are an awful lot of men out there, and women, but mostly men, who believe that they have got a fast-track path to Heaven, if they do the things that they believe God is telling them to do, and I don't just mean Islamic people. I mean Fundamentalist Christians.

In America, we have to learn to be patient enough to figure out what somebody is saying. Somebody might actually be saying something.

I always wanted to play a mental patient. I was fascinated with playing crazy people in college, and I don't know if I ever quite perfected it.

I mean being a writer is like being a psychoanalyst, but you don't get any patients.

When I did the anthem, I did it with the understanding in my heart and mind that I did it because I'm a patriot. I was trying to be a grateful patriot. I was expressing my feelings for America when I did the anthem my way instead of just singing it with an orchestra.

I think people could justify labeling me if they saw a pattern in what I do, but right now that's impossible.

A song like 'When The Levee Breaks' has a very simple pattern, but it's hard to give it that feel that my dad gave it.

The ability of humans to read meaning into patterns is the most defining characteristic we have.

One of the things I'm trying to do over and over again in my books is create new mythologies, create new ways to understand the complexity of the world. I think what mythology does is impress upon chaotic experience the patterns, hierarchies and shapes which allow us to interpret the chaos and make fresh sense of it.

You have to be flexible according to patterns and needs of director.

I think of John McCain as a conservative, but he is clearly not the same kind of 'conservative' as, say, Rand Paul. The word is close to losing almost all meaning.

Paul Schofield said something like, 'If I'm not acting in a play, I don't really exist.' Those weren't the exact words, but he meant it's only when I'm acting in a play that I've got something to say about the world. And then why should I talk, when people can come to see it?

Whatever Paul Giamatti plays, Paul Heyman could also read for it.

It takes an entire book to tell you what it was like. To see Robert De Niro play your father - it's not a simple answer. To see Julianne Moore play your mother. To see Paul Dano play you - that's an even more inscrutable question... he's amazing, he's totally amazing, but I can't really say if he's a good me or not.

What you look for as a reader is somebody who is going to take you and say, 'C'mon. Come into the story. I'm going to show you what there is to see.' The guide who is going to tell you, 'Pay attention over there,' or, 'Do you remember that other thing? Now watch!'

Basically, the actor's job is to pay attention to the script.

I pay attention to the actors and stuff, but not even that much. I don't pay attention to who's writing.

The characteristics of people according to their star sign are similar, and we pay attention to how we can get the best out of them.

A good novelist pays attention to his characters. A good biographer pays attention to the documents before her. A good critic pays close attention to the thing she's brought to evaluate.

Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition.

I have this peculiar ability to be able to anticipate mouth movements on screen and fill them with words or sound.

Actors are not always the best judges. We have a peculiar idea of what we think we are, and sometimes it's best left to others to decide what we play.