Quotes About Interpretation

If your story is being told by someone who doesn't really know it, it's not going to come out accurate. A lot of it has to do with context. Whoever's behind the camera or pen or whatever.

I do have a way of playing piano where it's very melodic and emotional, but then often it's great if whoever's singing doesn't sing exactly what's in the piano melody, but maybe it's connected in some way.

Whoever utters 'Kafkaesque' has neither fathomed nor intuited nor felt the impress of Kafka's devisings. If there is one imperative that ought to accompany any biographical or critical approach, it is that Kafka is not to be mistaken for the Kafkaesque.

We are different people - you get a different take on the band whoever you speak to. Somehow, at the end of it, it goes through the filtering process and out comes the Radiohead thing.

And, you know, I think the original recording of Ravel's Bolero, probably whoever played percussion on that, will never have It played better than that.

Whoever removes the Cross and its interpretation by the New Testament from the center, in order to replace it, for example, with the social commitment of Jesus to the oppressed as a new center, no longer stands in continuity with the apostolic faith.

Historically, Islam was hijacked about 20 or 30 years after the Prophet and interpreted in such a way that the ruler has absolute power and is accountable only to God. That, of course, was a very convenient interpretation for whoever was the ruler.

I don't care if it's a Cole Porter song, or George Gershwin, or Lennon/McCartney, or Elton John, or you know, whoever, Bob Dylan. Great songs are great songs, and they stand the test of time, and they can be interpreted and recorded with many points of view, but yet still retain the essence of what makes them good songs.

Any cuts that are done to any film, they're usually things that have some personal resonance for whoever has got permission to cut it and feels they should. But it has very little to do with the actual weight, the truth, of the piece.

Whoever my films are about, they'll hopefully still have my sensibility, whatever that is.

I can't say what people use the experience of listening to songs for, but I would never tell somebody what it is supposed to mean. That defeats the purpose of making it. Hopefully, whoever connects with it connects with it in their own way, and it can mean whatever it is supposed to mean to them.

My appeal to the composers, whoever touches an old classic, will only be this much: take it up only if you can express it your way, too; work hard with the writers; make them see your new vision for the song; change the lyrics, yet, keep the soul of the original song intact.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

My position is the lack of a position, but, of course, you can't even talk about it; the minute you talk, you spoil the whole game.

Actually I think Art lies in both directions - the broad strokes, big picture but on the other hand the minute examination of the apparently mundane. Seeing the whole world in a grain of sand, that kind of thing.

I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.

Long-lived persons have one or two lines which extend through the whole hand; short-lived persons have two lines not extending through the whole hand.

Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.

I've done a lot of performance practice, Baroque playing, and some of the joy and the challenge of it is figuring out what the composer intended... You have music of the 17th century - it's all whole notes and half notes. But inside of that, there are so many things that one can do, at least according to what we know about performance practice.

One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite - that particular peach is but a detail.

My efforts have been to not only put the Biblical incident in the original setting, but at the same time give the human touch which makes the whole world kin and which ever remains the same.

I have to assume that everybody interprets a piece of art they're exposed to as if it's already perfect in its wholeness, without knowing any backstory.

I think you are doing a disservice to a novel just by transposing it wholesale onto the screen, because it doesn't work. They are completely different beasts.