Quotes About Interpretation

A play is not a tweet. It can't be compressed and embedded, and it definitely can't be delivered apologetically.

Seeing people Tweet my lyrics and really feeling for me, feeling what I'm feeling... in one of my lyrics I sing about 'the watch I just got for you,' and some girl was like, 'Yes! I bought him a watch!' I can be happy because these women feel me.

Trawl through the world of blogs and tweets, and you will find readers complaining when they stumble upon a word they don't recognise, an attitude that doesn't accord with their own, a passage of thought they find hard work, a joke they don't get or of which they don't approve.

That piece has been choreographed so badly so many times. I'm loathe to do it but I may eventually because it is one of the seminal art works of the twentieth century.

Brain research tells us that only twenty percent of human beings have a sense of irony, which means that eighty percent of the world takes everything at face value.

Usually, I'll drop twenty to forty per cent of the dialogue - you can do so much with gesture. I'm still waiting to do a silent film.

One of my favourite Donald Byrd tracks is 'Think Twice,' and I didn't want to sample it. I've always enjoyed when other people have sampled it, so I wanted to instead of making a beat with it or something like that, or freak the beat of whatever. I wanted to just recreate it in my own way, like how I heard it.

I sang 'Nessun Dorma' twice with Pavarotti, and he told me he'd heard 'Smoke' about five or six times, and every time was different. He was so jealous because if he deviated one jot from the traditional interpretation of the famous arias, he'd be crucified. We have the freedom.

I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.

You know what the material is so that you never play it the same way twice.

When I sing a tune, the lyrics are important to me. Most of the standard lyrics I know well. And as soon as I hear an arrangement, I get ideas, kind of like blowing a horn. I guess I never sing a tune the same way twice.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having to read a poem twice. Or even a book.

I love movies like 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' that are based on short novellas.

I'll read a script maybe twice, but I'll think about the role more than I'll rehearse lines.

It's hard to decide how to match words to music. It's not like it's twice the work. It's always difficult for me to explain to the composer what I'm looking for. I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music.

I've never got a part in the same way twice. I've never prepared the same way. I've never experienced the filming the process the same way.

Then I came in twice a week - for my own enjoyment as well as to be a guide. And then we started to apply some of the splinters of the ideas back into the piece.

All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.

There are certain things in 'Twilight'... As much as I'm proud of that movie and I do like it, I feel like maybe I brought too much of myself to the character. I feel like I really know Bella now. But most readers feel like they know Bella because it's a first-person narrative.

I think, though, that people will read into a reporter's story a bias that they want to see in a reporter.

The words of the world want to make sentences.

It's fine if you want a system that shows a boa constrictor to better advantage than a man.

What ends up happening is people form images and the image they form is, in some ways, what they want it to be. The idea of trying to correct the image is something I'm not interested in doing.

You can write very obtuse and abstract lyrics, and if they want to, people are going to find something amazing that you're saying.