Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.
Over emphatic negatives always suggest that what is being denied may be what is really being asserted.
I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows.
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.
The summit sings what is being spoken in the depths.
My work is not so much a direct commentary as it is an open-ended observation of the absurdities around us.
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
A single word often betrays a great design.
You know, we love to categorise or label everything in our lives: people, movies. But I think that those are just the decorations. They, of course, work. They're great, but that's not the thrust of the film.
Everything I think in life is about context and intention.
Style. People talk about it being stylish and beautiful, that's at the service of the story. Style for me means nothing without substance and there are moments and things about the film that are stylish but hopefully at the service of the story.
I've always believed that if you are precise in your thoughts, it's not the lines you say that are important - it's what exists between the lines. What I'm compelled by most is that transparency of thought, what is left unspoken.
The truth of a myth...is not in its words but its patterns.
A book consists of two layers: on top, the readable layer ... and underneath, a layer that was inaccessible. You only sense its existence in a moment of distraction from the literal reading, the way you see childhood through a child. It would take forever to tell what you see, and it would be pointless.
Every great narrative is at least two narratives, if not more - the thing that is on the surface and then the things underneath which are invisible.
Writers mean more than they say and say more than they mean.
People gravitate to religion to feel a connection to the underlying meaning of everything. Well, as a scientist, you're always looking for the underlying meaning, and that, to me, is such a spiritual life, I wish people would open themselves up to that wonder.
The story is not in the words; it's in the struggle.
We have to look at the substance of something rather than the shadow.
Studying psychology is fun because you're always looking for the same things I think a writer should be looking for, which is the story behind the story.
There is much worth noticing that often escapes the eye.
Acting doesn't have anything to do with listening to the words. We never really listen, in general conversation, to what the other person is saying. We listen to what they mean. And what they mean is often quite apart from the words. When you see a scene between two actors that goes really well you can be sure they're not listening to each other - they're feeling what the other person is trying to get at. Know what I mean?
The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it.
We were in dialogue that was about something other than what we were saying.
There's timing in drama. You have to have a sense of rhythm. But the real thing that lends yourself to drama as opposed to comedy is a sense from the audience of whether there's more to it than you can see.
