Gza Quotes

I don't like to write rhetorically or get on a soapbox. I try to make the stuff multi-layered, so that it always has a life outside its social context. I don't believe that you can tell people anything; you can only draw them in.

Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too.

Lyrics need to be good, but they don't need to be obvious right away.

There's the conventional wisdom, of which I have none, where you get a record deal, you get a publicist, you get a campaign, and you do the tour, but none of that adds up to things like nuance and subtlety and dynamic.

I am oblique; I think that has to do with my own nature. I like trying to do things which work on many levels, because I think it is terribly important to give an audience a lot of things they might not get as well as those they will, so that finally the film does take on a texture and is not just simplistic communication.

I like the songs to appear very simple and to flow by without any kind of hiccup, but there has to be this impression of other currents underneath. Like if the songs aren't, on some level, multidimensional, we lose interest in them.

I personally feel like certain topics and certain issues aren't really being conveyed the right way in music nowadays. It's all very direct and to the point without leaving anything to the imagination.

Any play that's making a point is less interesting than something that stays with you and suggests something further.

We're not one thing, as human beings, so any character that is written uni-dimensional, that's just a shallow character with shallow writing and shallow acting.

My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it.

I think the job of movie reviewing can be really tough. If a film has layers that need to be thought about, it's easy to get missed the first time around.

I get drawn in when I feel there is something deep and mysterious going on beneath the surface of something.

Life is filigree work. What is written clearly is not worth much, it's the transparency that counts.

The performances I enjoy are the ones that are hard to read or ambiguous or left-of-centre because it makes you look closer and that's what humans are like - quite mysterious creatures, hard to pinpoint.

I didn't like characters that were one- or two-dimensional. I liked a guy to have a lot of different levels to him and layers, and I think I pretty well succeeded with Thanos.

Country's cool if you like that kind of thing, but it doesn't have the complexity or - what's the word? - subtlety.

If it's simple simple, it's boring. We try for the idea that is so simple that it will make you think and rethink.

I'd rather not ever make anything overly simple just because I'm scared people won't get it.

We paint a slow picture. You can see the brushstrokes. We don't get to the point, and sometimes when we do, our readers don't notice, in fact. It's so couched in nuance, it can fly right over a person's head. 'What was that you said? I couldn't quite make it out.'

As a drummer, I always approach things as, 'I want to play just enough to keep other drummers interested, but not enough to go over the average listener's head.'

I actually had publishers that would encourage me at times to keep it simpler, not pack in so much information, but I'm a fan of songs and movies and books that the second time you read them, you find more stuff that you missed, so I like to pay attention to that detail.

I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

It is not hard to compose but it is wonderfully hard to let the superfluous notes fall under the table. . . So many melodies fly about, one must be careful not to tread on them.

Without complexity, there's no intensity.

Governing a large state is like boiling a small fish.