Quotes About Interpretation

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit.

The trouble is, once you say something about a source, then you've pegged it down, and so now I'm reluctant to say anything. If I say I developed 50 different shapes from Mississippian tumuli, that doesn't mean they're copies of tumuli - I'm not ripping off those shapes.

You can start from any source material, and you can approach it with a jazz ear, and then it will become a jazz moment.

My work always comes from the same source - from movement. It doesn't necessarily come from an outside idea, though the source can be something small or large that I've seen, often birds or other animals. The seeing can then provoke the imagining.

For me, the source material can come from anywhere. It can be a poem, it can be a dream, it can be a movie, as long as the end part of it is interesting - that's what it's about for me.

I think my background in film taught me that a great book adaptation is not always slavishly faithful to the source material.

We really should stop taking historical novelists seriously as historians. The idea that they have authority is ludicrous. They are very good at imagining character: that's why the novels sell. They have no authority when it comes to the handling of historical sources. Full stop.

To me, everything outside of Los Angeles is the 'south,' including places like San Diego. It's sort of like the saying, 'Everything is God.' Indeed it is.

You can't do Shakespeare with a Southern accent, honey.

In line with international law, only the U.N. Security Council could sanction the use of force against a sovereign state. Any other pretext or method which might be used to justify the use of force against an independent sovereign state are inadmissible and can only be interpreted as an aggression.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

I asked someone once why he liked Jean-Michel's work and why it was being singled out for acclaim, and he said, 'Because it looks like art.' But then again, art doesn't always look like art at first. The way the space shuttle that lifts off doesn't much resemble the space shuttle as it lands.

I always like to talk about how important space is. Art is in the spaces. Anybody can sing a note; it takes an artist to sing the spaces. Anybody can paint a brushstroke; it takes an artist to know when not to put the brushstroke.

You really have to take your time; you have to know your character and your scene. The line you are about to say comes from the moment right before. It's not what's said, it's what is in between the spaces, it's what's in between the lines; that is the most important to play.

I think that my interpretation of Italian was a lot more southern than what my husband cooks. You know, I grew up in Queens and in Brooklyn, and we - really, it's more southern. It's Naples and Sicily. It's heavier. It's over-spiced. And like most Americans, I thought spaghetti and meatballs was genius.

I describe my works as books, but my publishers in Spain, in the United States, and elsewhere insist on calling them novels.

What's funny in Italy may not be funny in Spain.

The only step that makes the valuable to become valueless is the negative side of your eyes that you use to see it.

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Most of my beholders are blind.

If someone asked you what color the sky is, what would you say?

Beauty lies in the LIES of the beholder!

Most beauty lies in the LIES of the beholder!

Understand the poem not the poet.