in my skimmings over fiction I cannot recall any writer so continuously implicated in his own work as George Moore.
You can't catch the big fish by skimming the surface.
It is not a question of skimming the surface of the art, it must be probed to its depths, for to seize upon superficial things only is to degenerate into mediocrity and obscurity.
The best filmmakers, I think, have always had very narrow frameworks for their stories, and then they can go deeply, rather than skimming the surface.