Subtext Quotes

• Melodies are just honest. They can only be what they are. Words have the capacity for deception. Theyre all full of subtext, and some of them are cliche and overused and vernacular. Theyre tricky. All I can say is, words are tricky.

  Andrew Bird

  Deception, Honest, Cliche

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, www.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.

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• It was like hiking into a Hemingway story; everything was sepia-toned and bristling with subtext.

  Leslie What

  Hilarious, Hiking, Stories

  Leslie What (2008). “Crazy Love: Stories”

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• If you know why someone is doing what they're doing, why they're behaving the way they are, then that's your job to reveal that, and often that's situational. The storytelling does that, and then some of it's your job as an actor to make that subtext come to life.

  Cate Blanchett

  Jobs, Doe, Actors

  "Cate Blanchett, Peter Sarsgaard and Andrew Dice Clay Talk Blue Jasmine, Meeting and Working with Woody Allen, Plus Allen’s Best Female Protagonists". Interview with Sheila Roberts, collider.com. July 29, 2013.

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• Celebrity poverty, that's the hidden scandal in Blair's Britain. You can't help but worry for them. A girl I knew developed X-ray eyes for celebrity sorrows. She taught me to read the subtext of the down-market celebrity interview, she knew all the Hollywood codes, and followed the deep backgrounds.

  Peter York

  Girl, Eye, Worry

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• For me really good acting is about subtext.

  Clive Owen

  Acting, Good Acting

  "Larry King Live", edition.cnn.com. November 8, 2005.

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• There's no subtext in Harry Potter really; it's all magic, anything can happen. Why do I say this? Because it's a magic spell. It's quite nice in a way. There is a real freedom to it.

  Michael Gambon

  Real, Nice, Magic

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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

  Gary Oldman

  Writing, Play, Acting

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• Phone calls like ours only happen when you've spent several years hurting and being hurt, until every work you utter or hear becomes coded and loaded, as complicated and full of subtext as a bleak and brilliant play.

  Nick Hornby

  Hurt, Phones, Years

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• It starts with the writing. We have to think of all these characters - we have to treat them all equally. We have to think of them as having an interior life and having motivations. When I'm drawing female characters, I'm looking for that. I'm looking for subtext. I'm looking for ways to make the reader relate to them in a way that goes beyond the pure aesthetic value. You know, just drawing an attractive woman really gets kind of boring after a while.

  Cliff Chiang

  Motivation, Book, Writing

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• I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.

  Berkeley Breathed

  Libertarian, Bunch, Whiners

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. June 25, 2003.

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• I've always been a character actor, although I'm not quite sure what that means. All my scripts are absolutely covered in notes, so any time I say anything - even 'pass the salt' - I have six subtexts, comments on what I really mean when I'm saying that. Maybe that's what gives the impression that I'm saying one thing and thinking something else.

  Christopher Walken

  Character, Mean, Thinking

  Biography/Personal quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I try and make non-fiction films that feel like fiction, so I'm always looking for the subtext and that's what really excites me.

  Brett Morgen

  Trying, Fiction, Film

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The emoji still doesn't really speak to the complexity that actually - or the subtext that goes on between when people actually speak face-to-face.

  Cate Blanchett

  People, Goes On, Faces

  "Cate Blanchett talks to 7.30 about her new movie and marriage equality". "7.30" with Sabra Lane, www.abc.net.au. December 18, 2015.

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• If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic....Authors arrive at text and subtext in thousands of ways, learning each time they begin anew how to recognize a valuable idea and how to reader the texture that accompanies, reveals or displays it to its best advantage.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, Thinking, Discovery

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• The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on.

  Frank Zappa

  Atheist, Garden, Essence

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• I like bringing little subtle complexities to a character. It's all about the subtext. No one can really describe or fully know another human being, even if they get a hook on them. It's more about instinctively knowing whether you like somebody or not.

  Ray Stevenson

  Character, Knowing, Hook

  Source: collider.com

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• You have to watch out with my plays. They're like yeast. You think they're one thing, then all of a sudden subtext gets to working.

  Horton Foote

  Thinking, Play, Watches

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• I do tend to be an analyzer. I'm an old English major from way back, so I do have fun tearing apart texts and trying to find the hidden secrets and the subtexts in there.

  Cynthia Nixon

  Fun, Secret, Trying

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• Anderson sent me to give you this he said. I believe the subtext was kiss and makeup. This time I was sure I made a face. "I rather kiss a copperhead." I grabbed the envelop from his hand. He laughed and held up his hands in surrender. Don't worry. It was only a figure of speech.

  Jenna Black

  Believe, Kissing, Makeup

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• Dr. Everest, got up and gave us a little pep talk. Mostly it boiled down to the fact that it was autumn, and everyone was back, and while that was a great thing, people better not get cocky or misbehave or he'd personally kill us all. He didn't actually say those words, but that was the subtext.

  Maureen Johnson

  Cocky, Autumn, People

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• I moved to leave, and Dylan actually grabbed my shoulders. I was so surprised that i forgot to karate-chop his elbows and break his arms.' “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he said urgently. “What you want does not matter here,” I said slowly and carefully. I hoped Dylan was sensitive enough to read between the lines, to the subtext of: Let go of me or I’ll kill you.

  James Patterson

  Letting Go, Doe, Read Between The Lines

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• You can sing if you have a great voice, but to connect that instrument to the text and connect it to the subtext, what lies underneath and the emotion, is indeed a rare talent.

  Marc E. Platt

  Lying, Voice, Emotion

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• All the music I loved as a child, people thought it was junk. People were unaware of the subtext in so many of those records but if you were a kid you were just completely tuned in, even though you didn't always say - you wouldn't dare say it was beautiful.

  Bruce Springsteen

  Beautiful, Children, Kids

  "Meet the new boss". Interview with Mark Hagen, www.theguardian.com. January 17, 2009.

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• He'd only been gone two seconds, but the room got brighter when they were together, as if they were two elements that became brilliant in proximity. At Sam's clumsy efforts to carry the vacuum, Grace smiled a new smile that I thought only he ever got, and he shot her a withering look full of the sort of subtext you could only get from a lot of conversations whispered after dark. It made me think of Isabel, back at her house. We didn't have what Sam and Grace had. We weren't even close to having it. I didn't think what we had could get to this, even if you gave it a thousand years.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Dark, Thinking, Years

  Maggie Stiefvater (2014). “Shiver Series (Shiver, Linger, Forever, Sinner)”, p.509, Scholastic Inc.

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• As a director, I like trying to unlock the subtext of the scene and try to put the camera in a place that helps that.

  David Brooks

  Trying, Cameras, Directors

  "Director David Brooks ATM Interview". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. April 4, 2012.

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