Visually Quotes & Sayings

Guys like Spielberg and Zemeckis and really anybody who is a storyteller-filmmaker today has studied Hitchcock and the way he visually tells a story. He was the master of suspense, certainly, but visually you would get a lot of information from what he would do with the camera and what he would allow you to see as the story was unfolding. — Ralph Macchio

I'm a visual thinker. Research tells us that only 20 per cent of people think visually. So what about the other 80 per cent? Don't they think in pictures? I mean if you imagine washing and preparing potatoes you visualise the process, right? — Douglas Coupland

Most of the planet's terrestrial surfaces are visually accessible through video cameras and satellite imagery, if not physically within reach. Even the approaches to Mount Everest are now littered with human debris. One can drive to Timbuktu, which for centuries was synonymous with inaccessibility. — Alan Huffman

Making music clips, I have a responsibility to depict the artist in a way that suits them, and feels comfortable with how they want to present their music. From there I usually try to tell a story visually that complements the music, that lets the music be the hero element of the project. I just try to do something that feels sincere and creative and a little bit home-brewed so it doesn't feel too plastic or phony. — Adria Petty

I would love to make a 1830's period piece, a house in the country, a classic atmospheric haunted house movie, visually it would be so beautiful, the costumes, the candles, the darkness, and the quiet, no radio, to TV, the clock ticking away. — Conor McPherson

Michael Jackson was the biggest star the world has ever seen - he put so much into everything; a lot of attention to detail. I want to do that. I want to pay that kind of attention to detail in everything - in music, visually - all of that. — Kris Allen

I remember, as a young man, wanting to experience a car going at those speeds and being visually nourished by something which I loved so much. And I wanted to race fast cars and have a good time. — Dominic Cooper

I think that the most important requirement is to capture the essence of a piece of art. You look at it, essentially absorb it, and you have to be able to understand it visually without having to think about how it was done. I was already able to do that as a child. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

Information is expanding daily. How to get it out visually is important. — John Maeda

Visually speaking, nothing calls Shakespeare to mind like Hamlet holding Yorick's skull. — Ian Doescher

I worked really hard, and I surpassed myself ... I didn't have, visually, what it took. I was not pretty, I had teeth problems, and I was very skinny. I didn't fit the mold. — Celine Dion

I wouldn't say I see things visually first, but what I do think is important, for a lot of screenwriters, is to not just think about the words on the page, but also the world as a whole and the vibe of the movie, rather than a sequence of scenes written on the page. — Evan Daugherty

Most people find it difficult to understand purely verbal concepts. [...] We employ visual and spatial metaphors for a great many everyday expressions [...] We are so visually biased that we call our wisest men visionaries! — McLuhan Marshal

I chose to tell the story visually, so that anyone of any age, from any country, could understand it. — Bill Watterson

I think people just see cinematography as being about photography and innovative shots and beautiful lighting. We all want our movies to look great visually, to be beguiling and enticing, but I think that what really defines a great cinematographer is one who loves story. — Seamus McGarvey

I wanted to define the vocabulary of a wedding both visually and intellectually. The book is about more than weddings or wedding dresses. It's a metaphor for women's lives, their creativity. — Vera Wang

Women are, in general, less shallow visually. If their man gains 10, 20 pounds, they don't care as much. But I've been with women over the years when my weight fluctuated, and they're definitely more interested physically when I am in really great shape. — Hank Azaria

A good picture book should have events that are visually arresting - the pictures should call attention to what is happening in the story. — Chris Van Allsburg

Television is all about sound. You'll never get a moment of silence unless there's something really extraordinary going on, on screen, visually. They never let a moment of silence pass without being filled in television because it's a very sound-driven medium. — Charlie Hunnam

I create the concept, which for me is about deciding upon the right girl and the right 'spirit', and thinking of all the things that visually describe her. It's just like putting together a fashion show; for me, that starts with the spirit and the girls as well. — Marc Jacobs

Antarctic symphony has a geometric relationship to the landscape. It's saying that this landscape and the minimal kind of, you know I'm talking like seeing ice, is visually kind of eerily minimal. — DJ Spooky

I'm really visually stimulated more than anything. I don't really listen to music. I'm more into watching telly or watching movies and visual art. — Sia Furler

Painting is a way of thinking visually, so whatever is happening with me at the time gets reflected in the work. — Ali Banisadr

Her hair is troublesome and curly ... It falls in long, black strands, but each strand has a gentle, complicated undulation travelling through it, like a mild electric shock or a thrill, hat gives it a life of its own; it is visually analogous to a tremolo on a musical note. — Amit Chaudhuri

You have to offer sort of an evolution visually and do things like you've never seen before, like a fight between two men in a toilet on an airplane which was very exciting. — Jaume Collet-Serra

I now measure my growth as a photographer in terms of the degrees to which I am aware of, have developed my sense of, and have the skills to symbolize visually the four-dimensional structure of the universe. — Wynn Bullock

One guy I dated insisted on being called 'visually impaired.'" Amelie made finger quotes in the air. "I don't really understand that. To me it's like calling someone 'melanin deficient' instead of calling them white. People are so weird. I am a white, blind girl. I am a twenty-two-year old, white, blind girl. Can we just call it like it is? — Amy Harmon

Clothing, right from our first direct evidence twenty thousand years ago, has been the handiest solution to conveying social messages visually, silently, continuously. — E. J. W. Barber

I am very much aware of the visual side of things. I do a lot of photography. I often take Polaroids of things that strike me as visually interesting, just to remember them and perhaps use later. — Helena Christensen

My work space is so visually crammed. It's like an insane candy store. The number of textiles I'm surrounded with is mind boggling. It's a treat to come home to a nice negative space. — Colleen Atwood

I always imagine that I want to make art that is going to kill you,whether it's going to do it visually or physically, I'll take either way. — Robert Longo

I've been in the art world for many years. But the sad fact is that most writers are visually prepubescent. Generally speaking, the literary world is provincial when it comes to matters of art. And it always has been. — Richard Grossman

About 10 percent of the hearing impaired get musical hallucinations, and about 10 percent of the visually impaired get visual hallucinations. — Oliver Sacks

The best way to show an emotion is not through a character's words, but their smallest expressions - to take what an actor would visually do and try putting that down on the page for the reader to 'see.' — Susanna Kearsley

Learn and follow the different OS design guidelines for Tab Menus. Clearly indicate where the user is by visually differentiating the selected tab from the others. — Theresa Neil

Doing graphic novels is cool! It's fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out. — Anthony Bourdain

The fact that my clothing has been visually available to other people I do not find upsetting. The body is another matter. It is mine; I have found it useful; but it is an avatar. — Lionel Shriver

When I do watch shows, or projects that I've been a part of, I'm pretty good at watching them objectively. And that's mostly because I want to see how it came out overall, what the overall story was and how it came together visually, what my mates were doing. — Michelle Forbes

Acting isn't for me. I don't like being told what to do. I'm more interested in set design, more visually driven. — Sofia Coppola

I didn't react visually. This girl came up and knelt over the body and let out a God-awful scream that made me click the camera. (On photographing Mary Vecchio with slain student Jeffery Miller during the shootings of students at Kent State, April, 1970.) — John Filo

Advertizing, television and film all wield mighty powers to visually seduce us, while much fine art leaves us indifferent, confused or, at worst, repulsed. There is a desperate need for creative Christians to redeem the visual arena from both forms of excess, cutting through all the false glamour, tawdry baseness and dense obfuscation. — John Walford

I'm a much better filmmaker than painter. But studying it did make me visually acute and taught me lessons like being economic: Say something once and you don't have to say it again. — Jane Campion

As I look back on my fondness for the outdoors, and specifically the elements in nature that I find visually stimulating, I am surprised at how often the theme of dead trees arise. I guess it's that each one seems to have a story of its own, representing many years of living through everything that nature could throw at them. — Cory Trepanier

I love to tell stories and I love to work with directors and I think I write really visually, which I think directors like, and I love making movies, so I found something that I'm good at and I'm really happy doing. — John Orloff

In the digital future, texts will be annotated visually, animated and illustrated like never before. The austere 'prayer book' paper that permitted the space for Shepard's illustrations to Pepys' diaries is now being recreated in the digital era. — Chris Riddell

Our retinas and brains have been wired by a hundred million years of evolution to find outlines in a visually complex landscape. This helps us to recognize prey and predators. — Seth Shostak

Visually, I love the setting of suburbia. — Gia Coppola

People go to see a film because it's a great story and it's visually exciting to watch. — Dougray Scott

Movies and television may be influencing writers to write more visually, using immediate scenes with specific points of view to put their stories across. But fiction can always accomplish something that visual media will never be able to match.
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One of the great gifts of literature is that it allows for the expression of unexpressed thoughts: interior monologue. — Renni Browne

Things take a little more time when you're not doing really obvious sales. I don't have any nudity in my videos, or anything close to it, and I don't have shootouts or explosions or car chases ... There aren't a bunch of drugs in the videos and I am not wearing hot pants, and I don't dance. So, as far as videos or anything visually is concerned, I'm not a very visually stimulating artist. — Gavin DeGraw

I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all, timeless. — Massimo Vignelli

I think very visually, and I just never thought I had a novel in me. — Sadie Jones

We just worked hard to not just get things right and authentic, but also to make it consistent and visually right. For instance, there are colours that aren't in the film that would have been there in reality. I think part of the look of the film not only has to do with the way it's shot and lit, but also the lack of certain colours that give it a softness which really suits it because there's more focus on the characters. For instance, there's no yellow at all until we get to Miss Stubbs' flat at the very end. — Lone Scherfig

I didn't know it yet, but he would become one of our high school's super-athletes. There were hints of athletic (and, presumably, sexual) prowess there. For one, boys as ridiculously Abercrombie- esque good-looking as he was are always sports stars throughout high school. It is a rule, a self- fulfilling prophecy. It seems as if, sometime during elementary school, coaches make note of the little boys with the most classic bone structure and the best height projections and kidnap them, training them under cover of night. Not all of them will make it in college ball (that's what people call it, right?) because by the time they're all seniors, many of them will have been riding more on the sportsman-like nature of their faces than their actual abilities. But until that day, coaches will keep putting them on the field in the most prominent and visually appealing positions because they just kind of look like that's where they should be. At least I'm pretty sure that is what's going on. — Katie Heaney

Shiftrunes?" "Letters that are pronounced one way on their first occurrence in a text, another on their second, another on their third, and so on in a fixed sequence. It gives the poet an interesting technique to exploit: she can have pairs of words that alliterate visually but not phonetically as well as pairs that alliterate phonetically but not visually. And she can play the two off against each other. — Samuel R. Delany

A film, since it is primarily a visual medium, should really be like a silent film. You should be able to watch something and understand what was going on and use voice when you need to communicate something you can't necessarily communicate visually. The book is the opposite. The book is an inner monologue which is beautiful. — Tom Ford

I want to cover all areas that can be depicted visually. This ranges from fairytales to attempts to enter the abstract and view oneself as a social outcast or someone struggling to stay alive. — Gunter Brus

[Voicing a cartoon] feels like going down a mysterious but joyful black hole. Once you relax for 15 or 20 minutes, and really go, "I don't care if I look like an ass," it's really fun to see what happens. You know that nothing is being visually judged. — Jim Parsons

Ruskin's interest in beauty and in its possession led him to five central conclusions. First, beauty was the result of a number of complex factors that affected the mind both psychologically and visually. Second, humans had an innate tendency to respond to beauty and to desire to possess it. Third, there were many lower expressions of this desire for possession (including, as we have seen, buying souvenirs and carpets, carving one's name on a pillar and taking photographs). Fourth, there was only one way to possess beauty properly, and that was by understanding it, by making oneself conscious of the factors (psychological and visual) responsible for it. And last, the most effective means of pursuing this conscious understanding was by attempting to describe beautiful places through art, by writing about or drawing them, irrespective of whether one happened to have any talent for doing so. — Alain De Botton

I'm constantly being visually stimulated. — Brett Ratner

The way that you present yourself visually totally dictates your audience and everything that anyone thinks about you. — Grimes

Going to the school to meet the visually impaired was special. I thought I was inspiring them. I was thinking what I could possibly say to inspire them. Instead of me inspiring them, I felt they inspired me. They showed me how much courage they have, and how hard these teachers are working for these children. They made me feel like I don't have any problems in life. It gave me uplift. They made me feel so great. — Yanni

The aim of art is a constant, and a continuous job to reveal visually the attitude of our mentality. And the less we disturb the influence of our mentality the more I believe we come close to the truth. — Josef Albers

Visual journaling allows us to access our inner language of imagery and express it both verbally and visually, while exploring the connection between image and word. — Michael Bell

Galison uses the phrase "critical opalescence" to sum up the story of what happened in 1905 when relativity was discovered. Critical opalescence is a strikingly beautiful effect that is seen when water is heated to a temperature of 374 degrees Celsius under high pressure. 374 degrees is called the critical temperature of water. It is the temperature at which water turns continuously into steam without boiling. At the critical temperature and pressure, water and steam are indistinguishable. They are a single fluid, unable to make up its mind whether to be a gas or a liquid. In that critical state, the fluid is continually fluctuating between gas and liquid, and the fluctuations are seen visually as a multicolored sparkling. The sparkling is called opalescence because it is also seen in opal jewels which have a similar multicolored radiance. — Freeman Dyson

I draw creative juices from everywhere. I'm so visually inspired. I would watch old movies a lot to get inspiration for clothes. — Cindy Meehl

When you're kissing on camera, it becomes an issue visually. It looks like a skinny dinosaur creature is trying to kiss someone. It doesn't look good. It does not look like the classic romance kisses. If an actress is 5'3 and I don't bend down to kiss her, she would probably be kissing my lower sternum. — David Walton

I looked around at what my colleagues were doing, and asked myself, 'What relationship has it with what's going on?' I found there was a great distortion of contemporary life. Photographers were interested only in certain things. A visually interesting place, people who were either very rich or very poor, and nostalgia. — Martin Parr

I have always had a great interest in visually documenting the past. — Geoffrey Ward

There was a real sophistication and elegance to (Batman: The Animated Series). It certainly appealed to kids but had a depth that really made it fascinating and interesting to watch for adult fans. I think visually, it was stylistically stunning. — Jim Lee

When I write my scripts, there's a point at which if I'm not starting to see them visually, I feel like I'm kind of cheating. So my scripts are laden with a lot of visual description, which makes them not so much fun to read - I kind of weigh them down. — Todd Haynes

Most people would have probably lost count around seven. This was, Harry knew
from his extensive reading on logic and arithmetic, the largest number that most people
could visually appreciate. Put seven dots on a page, and most people can take a quick
glance and declare, "Seven." Switch to eight, and the majority of humanity was lost. — Julia Quinn

I'm a very visually motivated person. Music is always going to be the thing I'm most motivated by, but music and visuals go hand in hand. — Eliza Doolittle

Each story has a different approach for me and I try to work with lighting that will tell you visually the story better than if it was shot in available light. — Vilmos Zsigmond

I don't really think about a visual aspect to the work at all; I just think about making the piece. And everything that occurs visually comes out of the subject matter you are dealing with so that I find it difficult to treat the visual element as a separate entity. — Simon McBurney

I tell people that if I'm ignoring them, chances are I may not have heard them. I depend on hearing aids, but I've not found it a problem. I'm visually very aware! — Joseph Mawle

The type of adverts to be found on television and in glossy magazines are visually designed to have a power over the mind before they can even be questioned. The dark side of my work, primarily concerns the internal mechanisms of visual imagery and how these mechanisms address the mind. — Mat Collishaw

I was always a visual person. I could see things visually. I had a harder time with numbers and logic, and I always had more of an artistic sensibility. So that I could do. And it was something that I really loved. — Bruce Davison

But it's much more exciting to make Die Hard. One of the reasons that I think that movie is so successful is it deals with those very important blue-collar relationship themes. But it's more visually beautiful to show things blowing up. It just gives you more on the screen. — Penn Jillette

The sound is the key; audiences will accept visual discontinuity much more easily than they'll accept jumps in the sound. If the track makes sense, you can do almost anything visually. — Paul Hirsch

Three directors whose work directly influences mine are Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky and Susanne Bier (her Danish films). You'll notice that they all don't make feel good movies, same as me, and their films are always visually simple but beautiful (and I hope mine are!). — Chika Anadu

A word says more than a thousand images. Exercises for the visually inclined: illustrate "appreciation", "humor", "software", "education", "inalienable rights", "elegance", "fact". — Erik Naggum

In the law, rights are islands of empowerment ... Rights contain images of power, and manipulating those images, either visually or linguistically, is central in the making and maintenance of rights. In principle, therefore, the more dizzyingly diverse the images that are propagated, the more empowered we will be as a society. — Patricia J. Williams

I am a feminist. I reject wholeheartedly the way we are taught to perceive women. The beauty of women, how a woman should act or behave. Women are strong and fragile. Women are beautiful and ugly. We are soft-spoken and loud, all at once. There is something mind-controlling about the way we're taught to view women. My work, both visually and musically, is a rejection of all those things. — Lady Gaga

I'm not a very big fan of 'Slumdog Millionaire.' I think it's visually brilliant. But I have problems with the story line. I find the storyline unconvincing. — Salman Rushdie

I can't believe what's happening visually, in front of my eyes. — Murray Walker

If the onset of wrinkles in middle age were referred to as laughter lines, then to look at him, Scott thought, Twinkle's life must have been hilarious. He had sharp eyes that often seemed to visually contradict the lack of intelligence that could be derived from listening to him talk. There might not be a lot to respect in Twinkle, but Scott liked him. He just didn't want to end up like him. — R.D. Ronald

Everything spiritual manifests itself visually, everything which is visual turns into spiritual energy, I don't think this is so difficult to grasp. After all, we are born knowing we have a body and a soul: why not understand that sex also has them? — Paulo Coelho

I go and see anything that's visually new, any technology that's about picture-making. The technology won't make the pictures different, but someone using it will. — David Hockney

A big part of my filmmaking is that I can go somewhere new and, visually, be excited by it. — Asif Kapadia

It is essential for the photographer to know the effect of his lenses. The lens is his eye, and it makes or ruins his pictures. A feeling for composition is a great asset. I think it is very much a matter of instinct. It can perhaps be developed, but I doubt if it can be learned. To achieve his best work, the young photographer must discover what really excites him visually. He must discover his own world. — Bill Brandt

I've been drawing my whole life. My mom says my sister and I were drawing by age 1. Animation seems a real, natural extension of drawing as a way of telling a story visually. — Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Sometimes, when you're on the streets, certain music inspires you, and then you have a vision. But, at the end of the day, it's a synthesis of visions, so you have to think, as a director, of a scene, or how to deliver a line, or how do this visually. — Wong Kar-Wai

I just love when a movie takes a break and gives you a poetic moment, but sometimes it's good when they just happen randomly. If your actors are really comfortable and you let the camera roll, sometimes things happen and you just see something that's visually iconic, or emotionally that way. — Cameron Crowe

There's always so much more that can be conveyed on screen visually in the expressions of people's faces, in their bodies, in their body language. And also with sound design, with music. — Lynn Shelton

Chris Ofili's suave, stippled, visually tricked-out paintings of the nineties, with their allover fields of shimmering dots and clumps of dung, are like cave paintings of modern life. They crackle with optical cockiness, love, and massive amounts of painterly mojo. — Jerry Saltz

When you're directing an ongoing series, the tone has already been set. So a director will come in and fulfill that tone - reinforce the characters and their behavior. The challenge is to find unique ways that you can visually tell the story while keeping the established tone and the pace and the characters. — Bryan Cranston

I am waiting for the right story to tell. Just like 'Man of Tai Chi' just seemed to be the right story to tell. So I'm looking for that. Because I really love directing. I love developing the story. I love actors. I love the cinema of it, the way that you tell a story visually. — Keanu Reeves

I like to write about painting because I think visually. I see my writing as blocks of color before it forms itself. I think I also care about painting because I'm not musical. Painting to me is not a metaphor for writing, but something people do that can never be reduced to words. — A.S. Byatt

It's like a candy store for an illustrator, I connected with Harry pretty quickly and loved the way J.K. described everything; she's such a visually thinking person. You can't pass that up. — Mary Grandpre