Underlying Message Quotes

My main point is to be funny; if I can slip a message in there, fine.

There's what people say, and there's what people mean, and I like to explore the difference between the two.

When you're laughing aloud at David Sedaris' every sentence, it's easy to miss the more serious side of what he's up to.

You can't tell any kind of a story without having some kind of a theme, something to say between the lines.

A lot of times, my work is looked at very much on the surface. It's very easy to just want to put something in a box - to say, 'Oh, since this work deals with surface desires at times, this is about consumerism.' And of course, the base of the work is... not about economics at all.

One has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm and so on. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power.

One should not search for anything behind the phenomena. They themselves are the message.

the inferred is always more effective than the obvious.

The point is, it didn’t really matter what the book was about. It was what it meant that was important.

The true poem rests between the words.

The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.

We need to look at the subtle, the hidden, and the unspoken.

...much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said.

The unsaid part is the best of every discourse.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

I think comedy can be a way of sugar-coating a pill that needs to be taken, and whatever I complain about onstage, I hope I justify the negativity by using humour to make the point.

You gave me a significant look, but significant of what?

There are very few innocent sentences in writing.

All good writing leaves something unexpressed.

Everything in this world has a hidden meaning.

Truth can arrive within the story and ride latent - a bit incognito - within a story, and people are more prone to receive it.

If I'm in something funny, I like to try and find some kind of serious line in it that people can relate to.

Everything I do has an underlying political question.

When you've written long enough, you see that there's a common theme in your work.

If you love a book you tend not to follow its surface value, you follow the other things in it.