Subtle Suggestion Quotes

In Rio Bravo when Duke makes love to Feathers, the scene dissolves to the next morning where we see him putting on his vest and almost humming. It was subtle, but you knew what happened. Give me a towel and some blankets any day!

Over emphatic negatives always suggest that what is being denied may be what is really being asserted.

I find Shakespeare surprisingly sexual. A lot of his language - a lot - has that kind of sexual innuendo that is at once everywhere but also kinda lost because we have our own innuendo now, our own language.

The artist must say it without saying it.

If you state the obvious long enough, other people will pick up on what you're talking about and examine it. And usually they'll swallow it.

Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.

Nudge, nudge. Snap, snap. Grin, grin. Wink, wink, say no more? Could be, could be taken on holiday. Could be yes - swimming costumes. Know what I mean. Candid photography. Know what I mean, nudge nudge.

I can't stand innuendo. If I see one in a script I whip it out immediately.

He who wishes to teach us a truth should not tell it to us, but simply suggest it with a brief gesture, a gesture which starts an ideal trajectory in the air along which we glide until we find ourselves at the feet of the new truth.

It's no use telling us that something was 'mysterious' or 'loathsome' or 'awe-inspiring' or 'voluptuous.' By direct description, by metaphor and simile, by secretly evoking powerful associations, by offering the right stimuli to our nerves (in the right degree and the right order), and by the very beat and vowel-melody and length and brevity of your sentences, you must bring it about that we, we readers, not you, exclaim, 'how mysterious!' or 'loathsome' or whatever it is. Let me taste for myself, and you'll have no need to tell me how I should react.

A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat!

A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.