Quotes About Interpretation

Thoughts are like lenses through which we look at our world.

All those bickering worshippers, each one convinced their version is the right one. Imagine getting prayers from ten million believers, not one of them believing the same thing as the one kneeling beside him or her. Imagine all those Holy Books, not one of them agreeing on anything, yet all of them purporting to be the word of that one god. Imagine two armies annihilating each other, both in that god's name. Who wouldn't be driven mad by that?

As soon as a song plays, people want to skip to the next one. That's not how you judge a good or a bad music. You have to understand it, give it time. You have to feel.

We think we receive all that we perceive, but in fact, we actually give the sky its colour.

I think each character is different for me, but I am a director's actor. So if I get the right vision and right guidance from my director, I think sky is the limit for me.

My conception of my ideal reader has expanded quite a lot as I've matured: Ultimately when I think of my ideal reader, it's someone who's not sitting down with the intention of automatically arguing with the book: somebody who's going to give me enough slack to tell my story.

My theory in the '90s was that I didn't want to take a Jane Austen book I loved and reduce it to a 90-minute movie. The Emma Thompson-Ang Lee 'Sense and Sensibility' was beautiful, but other ones, I didn't think justice was being done. It's not a slam dunk to adapt these books.

That stupid postmodern emphasis on image over content has slammed us right into a dramaturgy that willfully leaves the audience behind and then resents the fact that they don't 'get it.'

I was able to make up lots of portementos, literally hundreds and hundreds of words... See, I find that mine don't have any meanings. They're not proper. Although I've got a great dictionary of them. It's like the Cockney rhyming slang or something.

It's interesting to see all these guys keep calling me out after they win. I don't know whether it's a slap in the face or just respect. I don't know. I have no idea. I can't tell what to make of it.

The critics slap labels on you and then expect you to talk inside their terms.

As a matter of principle, I always come to a film like a blank slate, I don't learn my lines in advance. With this approach, I feel clean.

If I had a Salvador Dali painting, I would cuddle it to sleep.

Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.

When you write a book, and you argue a problem is complicated and multidimensional, it's very easy to read a slice of that book and say, 'Well, this is the part that either confirms or really challenges my biases, so that's what I'm going to say the entire book is about.'

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

When I was young, Tchaikovsky was ruined for me by conductors who made it slick and treacly. Hearing Valery Gergiev conduct Tchaikovsky has been a revelation - he brings out all its raw passion. And Gergiev with the super-virtuoso LSO - well, it's just the perfect combination.

The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.

I have a slight controversy with the Dogme brethren because I've been saying that rules are to be interpreted; not that I haven't followed the rules, because I don't see the point of submitting yourself to a set of rules if you don't follow them. But having said that, it is always a lot of interpretation.

I don't like making comparisons. You might say one slight thing, find yourself misinterpreted, and suddenly you're in trouble.

Everyone in a complex system has a slightly different interpretation. The more interpretations we gather, the easier it becomes to gain a sense of the whole.

There is a small world of people who are very interested in contemporary art and a slightly bigger world of people who look at contemporary art. But then there is a much larger world that doesn't realise how influential art is on things that they actually look at.

It's an interesting education to listen to cricket commentary when you're not at the game. When you're there, which is most of the time for me, it flows over you. But when you're not there, you look at it in a slightly different way. You pick up things.

British actors come at acting from a slightly different angle. Because a lot of the films are cast out there, they are so used to the angle from which the Americans, and certainly the young guys from L.A., are coming at it, that I think it's interesting for them to find these English actors who maybe approach acting from a different place.