Emotional Intent Quotes

I don't sit down to write a funny story. Every single thing I sit down to write is meant to be sad.

During the actual filming, I’m not really listening to dialogue. I’m watching to see if the actors are communicating something and expressing something. I’m just watching a conversation. You’re not aware of exactly what people are saying. You are aware of what they are INTENDING and what kind of feeling is going on in that scene.

At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.

I don't like the word 'calculated' because it sounds pejorative. Intentional. Intentional is better, I think. Wild in passion and intentional in expression.

The devil take me, if I think anything but love to be the object of love.

If it's scary, it's supposed to be scary. If it's funny, it's supposed to be funny. That's all I try to do.

When I perform on stage, I often pretend to be someone other than myself to bring a certain emotion or intent to a song.

On the other hand, the pleasure caused by laughter, even on the stage, is not an unadulterated enjoyment; it is not a pleasure that is exclusively esthetic or altogether disinterested. It always implies a secret or unconscious intent, if not of each one of us, at all events of society as a whole. In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate, and consequently to correct our neighbour, if not in his will, at least in his deed.

Sometimes you'll have a heckler who's actually attempting to be supportive, but you don't realize it. Their way of expressing it is kind of confusing.

Pity aims just as little at the pleasure of others as malice at the pain of others Per-Se.

Maybe its a case of one guitar feeling a certain way to the hands that makes one subsequently move differently over the strings, but my intent is always to wring the maximum emotional resonance out of the object in hand.

If you're trying to make someone happy, you gotta try and make them happy. If you're trying to have a normal conversation, you've got to have a normal conversation. If you're trying to make them sad, you've got to make them sad. I think that's how you get real performances out of people.

I'm very much a believer in the character always heading for something or after something. But that doesn't always have to be a selfish thing - it could be an altruistic thing as well. You can't play good; you can't play evil. But you have to think: what does this person want to happen in this situation?