Quotes About Expression

What gets people into trouble with records now is that they want to build something up without substantial musical ideas. Without that as a foundation, you can add all the layers of sound you want - it's still going to sound like a mess.

There's a lot of music out there that's like, 'I'm so mad! I'm sad! I'm into skulls and crossbones and the color black,' and that's just meaningless and shallow. So much of metal is about that and it's hard to find metal that is substantial and meaningful in terms of its content.

I used to animate. I started in animation, and you'd end every day with at least one substantive contribution.

Language failed me very often, but then, the substitute for me was silence, but not violence.

Literally' - I'm not having it; people can't go around saying 'literally.' Otherwise, what's literal? There's not another word for literally: if it isn't figurative or metaphorical, what is it? It's literal: there's no substitute.

You can't substitute the act of making people laugh. It's definitely something that actors like to do.

What I like about singing is that, for me, it's a substitute for the psychiatrist's couch.

Acting is a bit of a substitute for life.

With Shakespeare, there's no subtext; you're speaking exactly what you're thinking constantly.

Shakespeare doesn't really write subtext, you play the subtext.

Half of a broadcast show, in my experience, is things happening, and the other half is people talking about how they feel about the things that happened. And so there's this sense of everyone saying their subtext out loud.

I feel like math and writing are the same thing. You're putting together a lot of complex things to satisfy different requirements. It's got to be aesthetically pleasing; it's got to have subtext; it's got to convey information.

Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.

There are infinite shadings of light and shadows and colors... it's an extraordinarily subtle language. Figuring out how to speak that language is a lifetime job.

I was tired of everyone saying that when you write about race in America, it has to be nuanced, it has to be subtle, it has to be this and that.

I like to use the stage and there's nothing subtle about me.

I don't sing to people. I sing for them. I told that once to Elvis Presley. He bought it. After that Elvis sang not to but for the audience. A subtle difference.

I'm kind of intimidated by the big screen - I often keep my performances much smaller and much more natural and subtle.

I find I can write for two lines, and then I have nothing else to say. For me, the only way to find something comes through the sentence level and sticking with the sentences that give a subtle feeling that there's something more to say.

This making studies and then taking them home to use them is only half right. You get composition, but you lose freshness; you miss the subtle and, to the artist, the finer characteristics of the scene itself.

A lot of my music is slow and subtle. The subtly is what I enjoy about making music.

It's always a balance between something that touches you intimately and something that you think is going to be generous - I like to find intimate, subtle subjects and bring them into strong story telling.

I've never set out to do anything other than get better at guitar and record and have fun. I feel like the Jazzmaster's just your comrade on that journey. It can be really subtle, it can be angry, it can be chill. It can be anything.

I learned that you don't have to be all over the place, that you can be subtle and you can say what you say. The words that you put together can be just as hilarious as falling all over the place or doing something.