Subtext Quotes

#1. 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

#2. All of Wes Anderson's films are confections, memoirs created in cinematic snow globes, with the subtext that memory is the most extraordinary confection of all.

Steve Erickson

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

Gary Oldman

#4. I love subtext, at times. It is the shy and sweetly unobtrusive whisperings that are truly innocent, yet filled with passion and blossoming promise.

Cheri Bauer

#5. I like to really know what every scene is about, what the text is, what the subtext is. Then I figure out how to express that when I'm shooting.

Lesli Linka Glatter

#6. I watched that film the other night and it embarrassed me. So dated, so coy, so evasively homosexual only a fellow homosexual might recognize the subtext.

David Leavitt

#7. 'Ocean's Kingdom' is a fairy story with no subtext, no resonance - it's not about anything except its water-logged plot.

Robert Gottlieb

#8. The hip-hop guy nodded curtly, like he knew that, and despite appearances to the contrary, he had not been trippin', but had, in fact, been chillin' like a mo-fuckin' villain, so step the fuck off, wigga. He crossed against the light, limping slightly under the weight of the subtext.

Christopher Moore

#9. 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

#10. I would say what Mad Men has taught me has been a super elevated evaluation of text in general, and understanding subtext, and understanding where a character comes from - what he means by this or by that.

Ben Feldman

#11. I like books. I thought you liked books."
"Let's be honest, Rudy, books are pornography for brains. All that subtext and bullshit and hidden imagery.

Hannah Moskowitz

#12. 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

#13. Do you think she was gay before or after she started watching Xena?" the male squirrel asked. "That subtext works like a nasty termite. It undermines the structure of human females from within.

Blayne Cooper

#14. After you've spent four years kissing somebody's perineum, the subtext talks louder than words.

Steve Kluger

#15. Recognizing who you are is not the subtext of a life. It's the main point.

Kiana Davenport

#16. Why the coy drama? I want him and he wants me; who needs subtext?

Diana Peterfreund

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

Leslie What

#18. Without subtext you have a flat, linear world; everything is literal, everything spoken is meant. With subtext the writer is able to access the gap between language and thought, and

John Yorke

#19. 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

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

Oscar Isaac

#21. What's great about writing a screenplay is that the subtext of the scene, what is not said, can sometimes be more important that what is said. Again, dialogue serves two basic functions in the scene: Either it moves the story forward or it reveals information about the character.

Syd Field

#22. I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards.

Garth Marenghi

#23. 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

#24. 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. Doesn't say much for acting, does it?

Michael Gambon

#25. 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

#26. When I used to watch comedians with my dad, he laid it all out for me. He wanted to be a comedian himself, and he was so funny. We'd watch stand-up on TV, and he'd tell me the subtext of what they were saying.

Roseanne Barr

#27. Well, I can no longer hear the silence." But that's okay, because you are mildly amusing and I am enjoying hearing you ramble on like a Led Zeppelin song. "Oh my God!" "What is it this time?" "Your subtext changed!" Jared's smiles were always

Amy Lane

#28. 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.

Shane Carruth

#29. With Bound, we wanted to pull at conventions, because you begin to wonder, Why do these stereotypes exist? Where do they come from? You use that as the subtext.

Lana Wachowski

#30. 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.

Noah Hawley

#31. Despite my affection for subtext and plot and prose at its best... life, it turns out, is nothing more than the finer details.

Bailey Vincent

#32. Five decades ago, as India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, began visibly ailing, the nation and the world were consumed by the question: 'After Nehru, who?' The inexpressible fear lay in the subtext to the question: 'After Nehru, what?'

Shashi Tharoor

#33. There is nuance now, subtext, body language, and pheromones.

Andre Agassi

#34. A book can tell you all the emotions and subtext that are so rarely aptly portrayed in film. You understand the nuances of each character. You breathe every breath with them and cry every tear.

AnnaLisa Grant

#35. When people start yammering about artistic responsibility, artists become wary. The subtext of such talk is that the arts need to be regulated, which is to say censored.

Steve Erickson

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

Andrew Bird

#37. Sometimes I even feel funny to say I'm in a biracial marriage because people are like, 'Oh, he's Asian?' The subtext is, 'Who cares? You didn't marry a black person.'

Diane Farr

#38. There's a subtext, you know, 'Honey, I'm home' really means, 'take off your clothes and fuck me."

"I never knew that.

Sarina Bowen

#39. 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

#40. God bless the physician who warms the speculum or holds your hand and looks into your eyes. Perhaps one subtext of the health caredebate is a yen to be treated like a whole person, not just an eye, an ear, a nose or a throat. A yen to be human again, on the part of patient and doctor alike.

Anna Quindlen

#41. I am not one of those actors who dwells on the histrionics and the subtext and future text of the character. I deal with the scenes that I'm doing at that specific time, because if I do that, they play in more of a real way.

John Barrowman

#42. As an actor, you are always looking for subtext, for layers, for what's going on underneath.

Antje Traue

#43. 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

#44. If you look at my body of work, there's always a dark side to my characters. They've always got a skeleton in the closet; they've always got a subtext.

Tony Scott

#45. Personally, I don't think we could do such a show if we didn't get along. The subtext of all this is that we're women in a show so we can't possibly get along. It's not like they write about The Sopranos like that.

Kristin Davis

#46. For better or worse, there is not a situation in one's daily life that does not have feminist subtext, superstructure, implications and one is constantly aware of it, even when you want to rest it stands up and hits you in the face.

Margo Jefferson

#47. Was that romantic?" he asked. "I was just making the suggestion,
since the coat's so heavy and warm.
I figured you'd think of me since it was such a nice gesture. And yet,
once again, you're the one who finds romantic subtext in everything I
say.

Richelle Mead

#48. I was being measured against the expectation that any feminist had to be unattractive in a conventional sense - and then described in contrast to that stereotype. The subtext was: If you could get a man, why would you need equal pay?

Gloria Steinem

#49. When you make illustrations, you're supposed to have a subtext; you're not just communicating words - you're actually adding another story altogether.

Peggy Rathmann

#50. A book becomes popular because of its text, but it's the subtext that makes it live forever. For

Chuck Klosterman

#51. I am obsessed with story. I had a late awakening in life. In college was the first time that I understood what you could do with a story and what a good novel is - literary value and subtext and irony and everything.

Shane Carruth

#52. Is there some kind of subtext to our current conversation? Because, as you might know, I am absolutely terrible with subtext. It gives me a headache."
"You can't get headaches,"
"Well I can't get subtext either. Far too subtle for me.

Brandon Sanderson

#53. For me really good acting is about subtext.

Clive Owen

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. I believe that filmmakers have to internalize the story and subtext so well that all of the departments can start to speak to each other - that music can speak to cinematography can speak to writing and back again.

Shane Carruth

#58. I haven't made art about Israel. There's a covert subtext of Jewish identity in my artwork.

Jill Soloway

#59. What narcissists and sociopaths will do is construct a false apology, in order to pacify dissent and further evade detection. This is usually delivered snidely, with a subtext of blaming the victim for their own actions, whatever they are.

William Lockhart

#60. You don't always want to be using the music in a way to express ideas inherent that are on the screen. You might want to work more around the fringes of the story, and work more with the subtext, and add more depth to the story through the use of music.

Howard Shore

#61. I think I am more attracted to characters with a subtext, whatever that is and they don't necessarily have to be virtuous, but they have to at least be human.

Clive Owen

#62. The text has disappeared under the interpretation.

Friedrich Nietzsche