Subjective Response Quotes

It's irrelevant who or what directed a movie; the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don't.

I think everybody reacts to entertainment with a different kind of visceral way, probably mostly based on their own personal experiences.

I don't want anyone to expect anything from any of my films; I just want them to see it and then tell me what they think.

Everyone reads a different book. That's what's interesting. Everyone sees a different film, as well. We bring our past lives to whatever work of art we're experiencing at that moment, and that's what makes it interesting. It's not mathematics. There are different answers for different people.

Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference: beauty demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend. If there are people who are indifferent to beauty, then it is surely because they do not perceive it.

I am afraid that there are more people than I can imagine who can go no further than appreciating a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it, which they can identify.

My eye is fixed not on the ending of the book but on the feeling of that ending.

Literature should not be exclusive, it should be inclusive. My general view is that you can't, based on your own experience, project what a book will do for someone else. That's why I don't review books.

I have my own past and my own personality. I'm going to relate to the material in a completely different way than somebody else might.

I don’t like the idea of “understanding” a film. I don’t believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn’t. If you are moved by it, you don’t need it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it.

I just try to find targets I feel something about and express it my way.

There are two things you can't argue in film: comedy and eroticism. If something doesn't make you laugh, no one can tell you why it's funny, and it's difficult to reason someone out of an erection.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

Only when you are moved by a painting should you buy it. Being moved is what collecting is all about.

The artists that I love- whether painters or filmmakers- it's because something resonates in me because I've felt it.

[When asked if her husband was still living:] It's a matter of opinion.

Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of 'liking' a work of art or not liking it; the more improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test.

the art of reading hardly differs from the art of writing, in that its most intense pleasures and pains must remains private, and cannot be communicated to others.

How can educated and sophisticated viewers react so differently to a work of art? Is it just Kulture Klash? No, since most of the time there's no Klash at all. On the occasions when we disagree, it may be because we're looking for different things in dance.

It's different for each individual. It's different when you talk about homosexuality. It's different when you talk about a malady like deafness. Everybody might have a different response to that and that's what makes it an interesting subject to throw in a movie.

Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?

Dream study impacts culture. We are put in touch with the inner poet who dreams. We hear our inner, subjective response to the outer world. That helps spiritualize our lives.

One's roused by this, another finds that fit: Each loves the play for what he brings to it.

We must perpetually try to distinguish, however closely they get entwined by the subtle nature of the facts and by the secret importunity of our passions, those attitudes in a writer which we can honestly and confidently condemn as real evils, and those qualities in his writing which simply annoy and offend us as men of taste.

There isn't any art until some creature sees and consumes it. And has a reaction.