Quotes About Interpretation

I like smart jokes, I like dumb jokes, and I like dumb jokes done smartly.

I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't.

What's completely insane to me is that people would consider music that's simple to be dumbed-down. Couldn't simplicity be a deliberate, smart choice?

Elizabeth, Lady C, claims to be writing at the limits of language. Would it not be insulting to her if I were diligently to follow after her, explaining what she means but is not smart enough to say?

I think we're much smarter than we were. Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there's another purpose to it.

When you write fiction, you have an ideal reader in your mind who's sort of you but smarter.

When I begin, theoretically and practically I can smear anything I want on the canvas. Then there's a condition I have to react to, by changing it or destroying it.

The sense of smell, like a faithful counsellor, foretells its character.

Reproof on her lip, but a smile in her eye.

Every now and then, someone will tell me that one of my books has made them laugh out loud. I never believe them because: a.) my books don't make me laugh out loud; and b.) sometimes I have said this to a writer, when really what I meant was, 'Your book made me smile appreciatively.'

I love 'hearing a person's face' in their music. I've been told by fans that they can tell when I'm smiling or feeling mischievous in my voice - that's a huge compliment.

The Carrie in the plot was too much like the Carrie in the book. She smoked, she swore a lot, she was very hard, very cynical. I could never have pulled it off.

Winks just don't come off as smooth for me as they seem to for everyone else.

Any actor worth his salt is looking for truth, the core of truth of the particular situation he is portraying, of that play. The playwright, the actors and the audience, that's what we're all there seeking. When it's working, time is destroyed. Sometimes 'Moon,' a play of four hours, would go by in a snap of the fingers.

I understand how a first impression is often just that: a quick snapshot that, on its own merit, is meaningless.

I don't think I approach my songs differently from other artists. You get a big picture of it, and you imagine the song and hear and feel it, and that big picture is like a snapshot, and it comes to you as fast as it takes to click a camera.

The way you see me on 'Jersey' is a snapshot, and you can't judge from a snapshot.

When I have to play the same role every day, I have the flexibility to play the character in so many different ways. It's almost like playing five different roles.

I'm not sure what 'cheeky' means. I hear it used so much and in so many different ways, I can't identify the real meaning of it.

There's so many different ways to play Mozart.

As for the notion that everything has already been said, maybe it has, but life is like meatloaf: there are so many different ways to present it.

I think because I've been working in front of audiences for so many years, I'm able to take in the input, good or bad, and just say, 'This is the part I agree with that you're saying, and these are the parts I don't agree with.'

We approach experience much as an artificial intelligence (AI) program does, with our brains continually translating the data of the present into the terms of the past, reaching back in time for the relevant experience, and then using that to make its best guess as to how to predict and navigate the future.

Few people put veal stock in the same category as, say, the Goldberg Variations or Plato's cave allegory, and this lack of understanding amazes