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With Shakespeare, there's no subtext; you're speaking exactly what you're thinking constantly.
Sep 10, 2025
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.
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.
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.
Shakespeare doesn't really write subtext, you play the subtext.
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.
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.
Liberal, shmiberal. That should be a new word. Shmiberal: one who is assumed liberal, just because he's a professional whiner in the newspaper. If you'll read the subtext for many of those old strips, you'll find the heart of an old-fashioned Libertarian. And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
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.
It was like hiking into a Hemingway story; everything was sepia-toned and bristling with 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.
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.
I think the benefit of being a writer is that I'm looking for the subtext on the page, because all good writing has subtext. And as a writer, you look at the big scope of things, the big story, rather than just your individual story line, because I think it's important to know what you're in and how you fit into it.
For me really good acting is about subtext.
I love thinking about things subtextually and I actually - like for instance when I write, I actually, I'm not very analytical about it. I don't ever deal with the subtext because I just know it's there so I don't have to deal with it. I just keep it about the scenario. I keep it on the surface, on my concerns. And one of the fun things is is when I'm done with everything, like now, for instance.
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.
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.
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.
With my horror movies or with this movie [Valley of Violence], same thing. The subtext of this movie is what to take away from it. Plot is never something that's been my driving force as a filmmaker.
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.
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.
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.
Every new generation of SF writers remakes cyberpunk - a genre often laced with dystopian subtexts - in its own image.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Obviously we're doing a comedy [Fresh Hell], and our intent is to entertain, but we're also really aware and trying to stay aware of the subtext of what it's like to reach a certain age and be dismissed, basically, from the fraternity you've always wanted to be a part of, and the desperation involved in trying to claw your way back into it.
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.
Want to discover the truth about deception in therapy? Jeffrey Kottler and Jon Carlson have collected a formable collection of old pros whose compelling prose sheds light on an important, but previously unexplored, subtext that permeates psychotherapy. Don't fool yourself: The roadmap to avoid being duped is contained within.
I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The brand is lying about something, or at least misrepresenting it. When I read a bottle of shampoo or moisturizer or other beauty product, I always perceive a dark subtext. The words haunt me. It comes across as humorous to the reader/audience, but in fact the words really do make me a little bit queasy. Nothing is as easy or natural as consumer brands want us to think - no problem is as resolvable. Your hair will fall out, eventually. Yet we do have these brands, and we line our shelves with them. There's an inherent irony.
I started with wanting to think about witches, about strong women who have special powers - who are often misunderstood. Then I found some beautiful blue fabric, so I made Blue Witches. My creative process is always like that. Organic, text, theme, subtext, each day evolving and trying to make strong, beautiful clothes. It's that simple.
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.
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.
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.
I haven't made art about Israel. There's a covert subtext of Jewish identity in my artwork.
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.
... somehow I couldn't stop. I had turned into someone that I would have pitied in another life; someone who searched for signs, who analyzed patterns, who went over every word in a conversation looking for hidden meanings, secret signals, the subtext that said, Yes, I still love you, of course I still love you.
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.
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.
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