Quotes About Subjectivity

Every story is narrated by someone, and since everyone has a viewpoint, every story is misnarrated (is narrated subjectively). Since all narration is misnarration, Gogol says, let us misnarrate joyfully. It's like a prose version of the theory of relativity: no fixed, objective, "correct" viewpoint exists; an unbalanced narrator describes, in an unbalanced voice, the doings of a cast of unbalanced characters. In other words, like life.

Science has always tried to eliminate the subjective from its description of the world. But what if subjectivity itself is its subject?

After a while I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will, he said.

when you love, you see what you love, not necessarily what's there.

I respond well to what I read of Immanuel Kant's idea that the world as we see it is absolutely a function of the way our brain works. In the modern parlance, it's an evolved machine that we carry with us.

The best works do not necessarily get to auction. I like to draw, so maybe I give you a little drawing. And then eventually it ends up at auction. And then critics say, 'Oh, that's a bad drawing!' Well, I didn't say it was so wonderful.

The autobiographer works in a treacherous terrain. The journalist has a much safer job.

Each person does see the world in a different way. There is not a single, unifying, objective truth. We're all limited by our perspective.

Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.

Everyone hears a song a different way and hears timing a different way.

Tiny Tim? Anyone could sing like that. It's atrocious. It's hideous, really.

The title of the movie is open to interpretation.

I'm fine with a title that's open to interpretation.

I have, I admit, a low tolerance for detached chronicling and cool analysis.

Bad art is from no one to no one.

Una única experiencia no es representativa de todas las demás.

When you read a novel, it seems that everything is clear, trite and understandable. But when you yourself fall in love, you understand that nobody knows anything and everyone must decide for themselves.

If it is art, it is not for all. If it is for all, it is not art.

Some people read the Bible as if its passages were Rorschach inkblots. They see what is in their head. In more sophisticated language, they project onto the Bible what they want to see.

Reducing morality to matters of opinion or feeling is at the heart of Hume's project. The reason his theory is important is that it is widely followed today. Morality is becoming increasingly subjective and is losing its propositional nature as people in our culture insist that judgments of right and wrong are merely individual subjective feelings or opinion.

The fifth and most serious charge against relativism is an extension of the fourth weakness. The relativist cannot morally evaluate any clearly oppressive culture or, more specifically, any obvious tyrant.

when you look at a photo or realistic drawing of a face, you see it as the face of another . But when you enter the world of the cartoon , you see yourself.

Memory is better than fact anyway, because it's created by feelings.

Great art is in the eye of the beholder, but great football is in the record books.