Quotes About Interpretation

I always try to get back to the original source of the song. It's not always there in the sheet music, which is sometimes just a sketchy blueprint of what the song is about.

Of course you bank on your experience, but as a sounding board. It isn't that you write down what happens to you every day. You wouldn't be a writer if you did that.

Bob Dylan has and Einstein had their own way of perceiving the universe and translating it for us.

Look at Bob Dylan: his voice is not a great sound, but it gets the idea across... and that is what's really important.

One of the things I learned on medical drama 'Bodies' was that actors can't play ambiguity.

Let me make something clear: I can't do anything in particular to make others laugh. I do what is necessary for a character. The body language of the character may make others laugh.

I love body language.

I can judge someone by body language and eyes.

It can get a bit boring working on accents.

Obviously the biggest change is that it's me by myself. When you don't have another band interpreting your songs or playing them the way that they have, it's bound to sound different.

Art can go beyond certain boundaries or blindness that we would have without that.

If you can even manage to tell exactly what a song is about, all you do is put that song in a box forever, and it loses its evocative power.

I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.

We see things as we are, not as they are.

I tend to think history is more a branch of literature than science.

We as actors ought to breathe life into a character and do it seamlessly to connect with the audiences.

I try to keep my voice natural for each character, but the spirit and the cadence and breathing for each character is totally different. It's those things that set each role apart from the others.

I just think it's good to have a big, living, breathing piece of music that's not just songs.

In playing the part of Mammy, I tried to make her a living, breathing character, the way she appeared to me in the book.

Brilliant documentaries are about so much more than their subject.

For me, when my agents and reps send me a script, I read it through, just for the story purpose of it, and then I read it again to think of my character and see if it's something that I'm interested in bringing to life.

I think every actor brings something personal to a role, right?

Art brings to life things that can seemingly be dead, and can put a fresh perspective on things that are living. It's so important we keep creating.

I think most British people who say they can do an American accent are so bad at it. I find it excruciating. I find it excruciating the other way around, too.