Quotes About Interpretation

We forget that everything has a meaning, everything has an impact on you. It's what we call soft power today. Nothing is innocent.

In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of 'their' works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.

The future art historians are going to be software guys who are going to go into the depths of the code to find out what was changed hundreds of years before.

My movies continue to be found and be sold because there's something going on in them.

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.

Good actors are always looking for props. They're looking for behavior. It makes it a lot easier. You're not solely dependent of what's coming out of your mouth. You're also less self-conscious, less aware of the camera.

What the printing press is to Christianity in the 16th century, that's what the Internet is doing to Islam now. It has opened up the monopoly over the interpretation of Islam that used to solely belong to the religious class.

I value multi-layered artwork that warrants a second glance, so I try my best to achieve that with my own work. If something is solely pretty or solely disgusting, you look at it once and get the gist and move on. If it's a mix of both, it's potentially more interesting.

I don't have what German directors call 'a concept' - a solid, fixed sense of the pattern that you should impose on the given work. I always get the feeling that I am raking up the earth rather than laying down the concrete.

If you watch fights cage-side, sometimes different punches look better than others. It's like camera angles. Sometimes some punches look a lot better than they were, and sometimes a solid punch doesn't look good. So it just depends on your angle.

I still approach a scene as one would approach a solo. There's nothing set or pat.

I'm into the whole song-as-a-piece-of-music thing: if it literally doesn't call for it, if it already has enough stuff going on, then it's okay not to play a solo.

One of my great frustrations for 35 years at the paper was the fact I couldn't play a record for the reader when I was writing about an artist. How can you describe the beauty of Emmylou Harris' voice without hearing it, the sensual lilt of a Duane Allman guitar solo without actually hearing it, or the growl of Johnny Rotten without hearing it?

When I write music for a film, I'm not writing a solo album, and I'm not writing a personal piece. I'm part of a team of artists. So I think like a filmmaker more than a composer.

I don't like guitar solos that are like, 'Look at me, look at me!' I like guitar solos that are little songs within the songs.

I try to look at most of my solos as a musical piece within the song, not, say, showing off.

Some do design in order to try to solve others' problems, while others make art in order to give others his problems.

In mathematics and science we solve our problems as well as create them. But in art and philosophy things are not so simple.

When the actors look your character, half the problems are solved.

It's stupid and embarrassing that you can describe something to one person and not to another. Until I've solved that problem I'm not going to feel like I've achieved too much.

I think people have the wrong idea of 'Moby Dick' as this somber, boring thing.

When we record a song, like 'Bedside Manner,' it's important that the next time I write a somber, mid-tempo song that we don't treat it the same way.

A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.

My lyrics aren't offensive. Some people find everything offensive.