Jack O'Brien Quotes

I never think that a film should answer questions for you. I think it should make you ask a lot of questions.

Any play that's making a point is less interesting than something that stays with you and suggests something further.

I like poetry when I don't quite understand why I like it. Poetry isn't just a question of wrapping something up and giving it to someone else to unwrap. It just doesn't work like that.

Was there ever such stuff as great as part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say so! But what think you? - What? - Is there not sad stuff? What? - What?

Shakespeare often writes so ill that you hesitate to believe he could ever write supremely well; or, if this way of putting it seem indecorous and abominable, he very often writes so well that you are loth to believe he could ever have written thus extremely ill.

The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity.

I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.

The performances I enjoy are the ones that are hard to read or ambiguous or left-of-centre because it makes you look closer and that's what humans are like - quite mysterious creatures, hard to pinpoint.

A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things.

I am rather partial to Shakespeare, though I haven't done loads. But when it's done right, there's nothing like it. There are layers upon layers upon layers, and you unpack new things constantly. I don't know how he knew so many things - about the world, about women, about human nature, life, death, our fears and hopes.

Making a film confusing does not make it intelligent.

Reality isn't straightforward or easily accessible.

What, if not Shakespeare, is open for interpretation?

There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.

I don't know of any good work of art that doesn't have a mystery.

A book lives as long as it is unfathomed.

I always liked records that didn't explain themselves too well - ones that you had to listen a few times.

Movies work, in my opinion, on the best level when they're more enigmatic, when we don't say it's this or that and where it raises more questions than answers.

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity... but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

Please do not understand me too quickly.

But there was more to it than that. As the Amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats.

I love movies that ask big questions but don't necessarily answer everything. I like people walking out thinking about something.

I thought again how you could never really know what you were seeing with just a glance, in motion, passing by. Good or bad, right or wrong. There was always so much more.

I was doing a terrible thing in using the very books you clung to, to rebut you on every hand, on every point! What traitors books can be! You think they're backing you up, and then they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives.

That's what I love about poetry. The more abstract, the better. The stuff where you're not sure what the poet's talking about. You may have an idea, but you can't be sure. Not a hundred percent. Each word, specifically chosen, could have a million different meanings.