Quotes About Interpretation

I don't deal in terminology, I deal with expressions: colors, shapes, tones, characteristics.

Don't take anything too literally. When throwing a coastal theme dinner, don't just put seashells on the table. Instead, think about the colors and tones of seashells, what they remind you of and go from there.

There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound.

Foreign languages was the only thing that interested me when I was at school, so playing in another language... it is quite demanding because if it is not your mother tongue, you are missing some connotations and some emotional depth of certain things.

My mother tongue, Mende, is very expressive, very figurative, and when I write, I always struggle to find the English equivalent of things that I really want to say in Mende. For example, in Mende, you wouldn't say 'night came suddenly'; you would say 'the sky rolled over and changed its sides.'

In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

I want you to hear me tonight, I am not saying that President Obama is the Antichrist. I am not saying that at all. One reason I know he's not the Antichrist is the Antichrist is going to have much higher poll numbers when he comes.

Tony, Stacy and Jay really looked at life completely different and that played into everything that they did, whether it was skating or with their friendships. And for the three of us, we had such a close relationship off screen, that it was so easy to have that on screen.

I don't read reviews because by then it's too late - whatever anyone says, the book won't change. It is written.

I've got my own philosophy. People who write books have different philosophies. You read too many people and you get screwed up.

I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.

Almost everyone's instinct is to be overconfident and read way too much into a hot or cold streak.

Sometimes, I think filmmakers grab too much from real life.

People tend to put too much focus on the lyrics. It's not the be-all and end-all of our songs.

In film, there's this kind of constant fear that you're going to be doing too much. That may be an unfounded fear because I love sizable performances on film, especially when they're by performers who push the boundaries of what people deem the right kind of size.

I don't theorize too much. I sort of let the experience sink in, and I have to discover what the character is by doing it, and having those thoughts that she's thinking.

I try genuinely, when I'm playing a character, to not judge them and just to inhabit someone as how one sees them. That being said, you also want to make sure that you don't blur the edges of people too much because humans are naughty and complicated beings.

When I do my own books, I take it as more of my own confessional, but when I illustrate for other people, it is intriguing because I feel like I shouldn't be stepping too much into the limelight. It's like playing the piano while someone else is singing.

'Black Skinhead' almost got deaded because it was too much like a soccer song.

I try not to spend too much time interpreting my comics for people, because I try to put out there whatever I can, and people can draw whatever conclusions they want.

Rumi, who is one of the greatest Persian poets, said that the truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.

I had this relationship with the Mona Lisa painting and I thought it was important to look further. In a time that was very masculine, Leonardo da Vinci took a feminist approach.

Data is a tool for enhancing intuition.

The imagination is such as powerful tool: suggestion is all you need. People fill in gaps.