I'm a writer; I like to retain subtlety and nuance.
Life and people are complex. A writer as an artist doesn't have the personality of a politician. We don't see the world that simply.
But the difference between the little pieces and the big pieces - I'm not actually sure which are the little pieces. With some of the big pieces, it's a lot of musical running around, whereas the little pieces, you can say everything you want to say.
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
The idea behind a dish - the delight and the surprise - makes a difference. Great literature surprises and delights, and provokes us. It isn't just 'Here's the facts - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.' It's how you tell it.
The best pictures differentiate themselves by nuances...a tiny relationship - either a harmony or a disharmony - that creates a picture.
These films however, have ambiguity built into them, because it's too easy in film to make a strident work of propaganda or advertising, which are really the same thing anyway, meaning the message is unmistakable.
All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.
The best of my songs are more than just a joke. There's something else going on - a character, or it's not just a plain joke.
I'm interested in seeing artists whom I respect who are very focused on the Black Lives Matter moment, bringing that into storytelling in a way that really amplifies the beauty and the humanity of people of color, and does it without having to wave a big sign that says, 'This is what we're doing.'
The artist must say it without saying it.
Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.
On a live-action movie, things happen that are unexpected. In animation, you have to fabricate the feeling. That takes a tremendous amount of nuance until the film becomes sentient and gives back.
Music contains a whole gamut of experience, from sensuous elements to ultimate intellectual harmonies.
I often use the same harmonies as pop music because the complexity of what I do is elsewhere.
The artistic world is one of high nuance.
It would be a lowly art that allowed itself to be understood all at once.
A poem can have an impact, but you can't expect an audience to understand all the nuances.
I think someone like Khandi Alexander, who's now on 'Treme,' is one of the most extraordinary actresses I've seen in years. But she's dependent on someone brilliant like David Simon to realize that and to give her a forum. Tyler Perry's not interested in that kind of nuance because it doesn't sell.
That's my job as an actor - to go on and try to do the work so subtle and so fine and specific that the memories will linger for a long time.
I take a cliche and try to organize its forms to make it monumental. The difference is often not great, but it is crucial.
Sad songs seem to work for me, but I don't want to be redundant; I want to add a little flavor.
You have to be very cautious that you're hitting the right beats and making sure it's funny, but at the same time when those notes are serious, you're trying to get your point across and it's not about the comedy.
Sometimes their oppression of emotion and the weird way it comes out is more interesting than painting it in bold primary colors.
I think topical songwriting is a real gift, and it's hard not to be pedantic and show up with the sledgehammer message.
