Quotes About Interpretation

Sometimes after a compliment about my characterization skills, I'm asked if I model my characters on real people. Emphatically, no. And sort of, yes.

Yes, I tried to change the classical style in a way that people who don't understand it can enjoy.

I draw cinematic and photography and art references from everywhere. That's part of my job. So yes, you watch films, you see artists for palettes, photographers for mood.

The problem with Bush is that yes, he's religious in a fundamentalist sort of way, they read the Old Testament as a sort of charter for the chosen people to do what they like.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.

If I have not read a book before, it is, for all intents and purposes, new to me whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

My job as a performer is to make sure that whatever happens in a performance lives in somebody else, that it's memorable... If you forget tomorrow what you heard yesterday, there's really not much point in you having been there - or me, for that matter.

I was at first but I mean I thought at first that I wanted a little bit of that in there but the reasoning behind what they cut and what they kept really makes sense and it really played for me when I saw it yesterday, it all worked and was understood.

If you look upon the rule in Titus it is a rule to me. If you convince me that it is no rule I shall yield.

No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely.

Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK, I got it. I know what's happening.'

I've read 'Autobiography of a Yogi' at different ages and interpret something new each time.

When I brought 'El Topo' to New York, no one understood the picture. But John Lennon understood. John and Yoko Ono, they presented 'El Topo' in the United States; they introduced it.

I think everything should be in verse. 'The New York Times' should be in verse.

Most of my work - including everything from my own comics to the covers I've drawn for 'The New Yorker' - is the result of taking some personal experience or observation and then fictionalizing it to a degree.

When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.

The heart of the matter seems to me to be the direct interaction between one's making a poem in English and a poem in the language that one understands and values. I don't see how you can do it otherwise.

I've done a lot of assignment work in my life, and the only way you can do it is to make it your own as quickly as possible, and then you give it back.

Acting in another language is great, and I've done that. But you can't do it as well as you can do it in your own language.

I always found the dramatic side of things easier than the comedy, because there's so many ways to do comedy, and it's also subjective. Someone might not laugh at what you do, whereas if you're going to do a dramatic scene, there's usually only one way you can do it.

You have to figure out what's important and keep the main points, though I will swing a little outside the box. It affords me the freedom to find out who the character is, and it's been a positive technique for me. I'm not saying everyone should change words, but if you can do it with confidence, you may nail it.

You guys are both saying the same thing. The only reason you're arguing is because you're using different words.

What I believe about the young age of the earth comes out of taking the Bible as written. And I've said numerous times over the years that the age of the earth, for example, is not a salvation issue but an authority issue.