Jorge Luis Borges Quotes

I'm not a fan - this is a personal preference - I'm not a fan of tour-de-force writing. I admire it, but it's not where my inclination is. I want to hide.

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

Poetry had far better imply things than preach them directly... in the open pulpit her voice grows hoarse and fails.

I think that if you can convey a kind of a complexity, a mystery, a truth in stillness, that, to me, is really worth striving for, and I totally agree with Michael Fassbender in that less is more. If it's going on inside you, the camera will find it.

Minimal is the word I'd use to describe how I live and dress, and it's also how I sing. I'm not a big fan of overemoting.

Christopher Reeve did such an amazing job that to give him some kind of accent or more bravado would have been wrong. Audiences wouldn't have responded to that either.

There are no moral lectures in 'Lookaway, Lookaway;' there aren't even any lessons. But there is passion. It is a work that hides its craft but never its beauty, that is ambitious but never pretentious, that does not sacrifice nuance for power or power for nuance.

I just don't like showing everything I've got. I don't want to look like I'm trying too hard to be sexy.

I think the more the actor lets you know what he thinks of the character, the less the audience cares - like a comedian who laughs at his own jokes.

For me, the game would be to assume a very intelligent reader who can extrapolate a lot from a little. And that's become my definition of art; to get that pitch just right, where I can put a hint on page three, and the reader's ears go up a bit, as opposed to dropping it all on the first page.

Never open a book with weather. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.

I always want to bring emotion across in a straightforward way. I don't want to get histrionic when I'm singing. For me that's just not interesting; it goes too far down one road.

I like the songs to appear very simple and to flow by without any kind of hiccup, but there has to be this impression of other currents underneath. Like if the songs aren't, on some level, multidimensional, we lose interest in them.

I'd love to tell actors about all the things they don't need to worry about. Less is more. If you have it inside, you don't need to show too much. People pick up on things.

I like to let the work speak rather than to have to talk about it.

I do not wish to produce prose that draws attention to itself, rather than the world it describes.

I have not tried for a career that's showy. I have always tried to layer things in and not push it. I love an underperformance, where you're so entrenched in who that person is that you're living in it.

I am myself sometimes, and I do state my opinions, but not in a comedy routine and not in my character. There always has to be some sort of layer to it.

I just like to keep things small and subtle and authentic, and ground everything in reality. So that is something that I feel is my strength as a director and I try to achieve as an actor.

'English Vinglish' is simple; that's why people like it. The film has simplicity and sensitivity. There is no melodrama. Some things have been conveyed just through expressions and no lines.

I'm really not someone who is drawn to something that's in your face, it feels a little forced.

I let Brel into my world. What I like about him is the simplicity of his language. It's not so simple to be simple.

I've never been one of those to kind of like, 'I want somebody to do something against their nature to titillate me.' That never holds any interest. And I always want people to be who they are and if they're being not who they are I feel like it's false and, therefore, less easy to connect to. I don't need them to kiss or to display physical intimacy. I think that almost becomes too obvious. I love playing in the suggestive.

As an actor, you think you have to go really far and deep and cry and yell to be good in a scene. Sometimes that's not the point.