Look, anything any writer writes is going to be on some level autobiographical. Part of the funny/sad thing is that you don't always know how autobiographical you're being.
Words mean more than we mean to express when we use them: so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer meant.
There are more truths in a good book than its author meant to put in it.
Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around.
Authors frequently say things they are unaware of; only after they have gotten the reactions of their readers do they discover what they have said
People read so much into what I do. It's fascinating to me because some of it's probably there, but I haven't thought of it.
I have more freedom when I write fiction, but my memoirs have had a much stronger impact on my readers. Somehow the 'message,' even if I am not even aware that there is one, is conveyed better in this form.
I mean, of course "King Kong" is a metaphor for the slave trade. I'm not saying the makers of "King Kong" meant it to be that way, but that's what, that's the movie that they made - whether they meant to make it or not.
A lot of times you get credit for stuff in your movies you didn't intend to be there.
You should let dialogue get as nearly out of control as you can. Characters should say what they say to each other instead of what they mean to say. The worst purpose of dialogue is to elicit information: "You know why we're out on this space station, Carruthers - to save the universe!"
Writing for theatre is certainly different to writing an essay or any other kind of fiction or prose: it's physical. You're also telling a story, but sometimes the story isn't exactly what you intend; maybe you uncover something you had no idea you were going to uncover.
People read things into my commercials that don't even exist.
'First Light' has gotten a reputation as a kind of cult classic about science. I never really intended it to be read as a science book, but books, like children, have a way of choosing their own friends.
Sometimes I say things that I can't believe came out of my mouth. Or I won't mean something and it will come out completely nonsensical.
The funny thing is the songs that people think are about me probably aren't. And the songs that are probably are the ones they wouldn't think... so that's where it kind of is funny.
Not everything has to mean something. Some things just are.
Silence is a statement that is open to gross misinterpretation.
One thing you can't intend is how you will be read. I hear it said a lot that my books are about the 'search for identity', and this is said admiringly, as if I meant to encourage such a search.
It doesn't sound like there was time for the word to be there. On the other hand, I didn't intentionally make an inane statement... certainly the 'a' was intended, because that's the only way the statement makes any sense.
Which is now a more hopeful statement than Swift intended it to be.
The best translations are always the ones in the language the author can't read.
A lot happens by accident in poetry.
No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
We move but our words stand become responsible for more than we intended and this is verbal privilege
I accidentally make innuendos all the time without even realising. I'm middle-aged, in that sense.
