Sometimes you have to shove all the surface stuff to the side in order to see what's underneath.
Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
Pu La's writing is multi-layered, multi-faceted, and deep.
It's a truism that you can investigate anything forever.
I like to think of my work and the way people approach it in the same way people approach a Lichtenstein painting. You can write a one-hundred-page dissertation about why he used comics. Or it could be like, 'This is cute!'
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
I don't really say much about reviewers. It's a very tough job to get all of the depth of a movie all at once.
Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Modern, not bottom-dwelling literature like a carp.
It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.
A multifaceted writer, very easy on the surface to pin down but incredibly difficult once you actually read him with any depth.
I love having those lyrics that at first make you think it's about one thing, but it's really about something so much more.
Do not make Mistakes about Character. That is the worst and yet easiest error. Better be cheated in the price than in the quality of goods. In dealing with men, more than with other things, it is necessary to look within. To know men is different from knowing things. It is profound philosophy to sound the depths of feeling and distinguish traits of character. Men must be studied as deeply as books.
I flee from symbols. I think those who don't want to solve problems go to the symbols. I'm looking for content.
The thing that fiction can do is look from the inside out rather than from the outside in. Even memoir leaves me somewhat frustrated. I think now we need a poet to uncover what isn't on the surface.
Even within one person, yesterday and today, there are differences. We must look at a deeper level.
What's wonderful about Tolkien and Shakespeare is that they show up your own individual microscope. They're so infinitely vast. You can reinterpret them in so many ways.
Truth is, I don't like movies that are only good once; I tend to dismiss them. I like movies that get better the more you watch them.
Beneath every history, another history.
Seriously, these days I tend to shut up in terms of external analysis and DO try to let things speak for themselves, while still trying to get some depth into them.
As a novelist, you deepen your characters as you go, adding layers. As a reporter, you try to peel layers away: observing subjects enough to get beneath the surface, re-questioning a source to find the facts. But these processes aren't so different.
I wish people were willing to dig a little deeper than the surface elements of a premise before tossing one story in with another.
Quality is decided by the depth at which the work incorporates the alternatives within itself, and so masters them.
