Quotes About Interpretation

In Count Julian I simply proposed to create a text which would allow for diverse levels of reading.

Singing beautiful melodies is one thing, but to deliver the text so that the people understand it, even in a foreign language, has to be worked at very hard.

If there's ever a place where you can't argue that you can put the facts over here and the text over there and see if they fit, it is surely in anthropology.

Honestly, I'm a shallow performer. I just go with the text and feel my way around it. There's not a whole lot of shaping.

My inspiration is endless; I can't define it. It is a constant flow and evolution. In general, I'm taking it from everywhere. People get nervous when they walk with me, as I'll see something and suddenly have to text it to myself.

My claim is simply that the literary approach is one necessary way to read and interpret the Bible, an approach that has been unjustifiably neglected. Despite that neglect, the literary approach builds at every turn on what biblical scholars have done to recover the original, intended meaning of the biblical text.

I like to read and dream and create music that is based on the imagery of text. If you have the combination of a great book and a great filmmaker, what could be better for the composer?

Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.

There are usually multiple messages that could be preached from the same text.

I like to really know what every scene is about, what the text is, what the subtext is. Then I figure out how to express that when I'm shooting.

You may feel that Peter Martins' 'Beauty' is too compressed and inexpressive, but it's loyal to the text.

A film is different than a script. The text of the script is what it is.

Whenever you do a new interpretation of a great, previous text of any kind, you always look for some kind of immediate significance right now.

If you look at Kirsten Dunst's performance in 'Melancholia,' which I think is absolutely wonderful - it's not even in the text, because she doesn't say much; it's all in her eyes. She doesn't have to explain what she's feeling. You just feel it.

Ultimately, as an actor, it comes down to committing to the text in the script.

You sit there, and you argue and you argue, and you sort of bully the hell out of the text until you're quite sure what it's revealing, and then you perform it.

I think we shouldn't be shy of thinking that we can interpret text like a movie again, depending on the point of view and what we do with it more than anything else. Of course a lot of remakes of important films, particularly of horror films, they suck.

You get to crack the code of the play. You get to really pick at it and see, 'What is the story that we're telling?' 'What are the clues in the text that I can find that will help inform what story we're telling?' It's almost like a detective mystery.

Values that I would be enforcing if I were a judge are not just my values, that I am not striking something down simply because I don't like it. That is a countermajoritarian aspect of our system of government. I would start with the text.

What I don't find compelling is doing classical plays that everyone already knows - and people are following with the text in their hand because no one is listening.

Texting is apocalyptic on some level. It's a reduction of things.

To me, movies are books. They are texts to be consulted.

There's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Qur'an, there's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Bible, there's no way you can misunderstand the teachings of the Bhaghavad Gita, or of the Book of Mormon, or of the other sacred texts of many of those religions.

My texts are written like palimpsests. They are written over and over again, until I feel that a kind of metaphysical meaning can be read through the writing.