Quotes About Interpretation

An image resists explanation. You relate to it or you do not. You cannot disagree with an image. Through identification with an image you comprehend a totality, rather than learn particular facts.

Sufism travels into the realm of story, inspired analogy and esoteric understanding of the Qur'an, so that the Sufi may ultimately become the Essence.

How can you tell if a Chinese poem is a good poem if you do not read the kind of Chinese in which it is written? Certain realms of experience charge an entrance fee. To evaluate certain experiences a person must have encountered that realm of experience in some fashion. He or she must have access to that realm.

When you see yourself quoted in print and you're sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation.

I like to watch the way a model moves in my clothes, the way she gives them life, or if they are wrong, stillborn, the way her life rejects them.

When you're on your own, you look for signs. Sometimes you make them up, sometimes they're actually there, but most of the time you can't tell the difference from the two.

It makes me sad that not every book is good,' I said. 'Not every book can be loved.' 'But when I pull a book off a shelf, and examine it, turning it this way and that, inspecting the cover, flipping through the pages and glancing at the words as they flash by, a thought here and a sentence there and I know that there is potential between those pages for love. Even if in my opinion the book is bad, someone else may find it good. Isn't that like love?

poetry is not—except in a very limited sense—a form of self-expression. Who on earth supposes that the pearl expresses the oyster?

No matter the truth, people see what they want to see..

a poem is only finished when the last reader has read it or listened to it.

the thing about portraits is, you need to show people the way they want to be seen. And I prefer to show people as I see them.

He can guess, but he won't ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything she'd never told him.

But the problem with rules, he reflected, was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on.

In Pauline and Mal's house, nothing was simple. In her parents' house, things had been good or bad, right or wrong, useful or wasteful. There had been nothing in between. Here, she found, everything had nuance; everything had an unrevealed side or unexplored depths. Everything was worth looking at more closely.

Why did I tell you so many stories? Because I wanted the world to make sense to you. I wanted to make sense of the world, for you. I wanted the world to make sense.

The writer's job, after all, is not to dictate meaning, but to give the reader enough pieces to create his or her own satisfying meaning. The story is truly finished—and meaning is made—not when the author adds the last period, but when the reader enters the story and fills that little ambiguous space, completing the circuit, letting the power flow through.

All their lives Nath had understood, better than anyone, the lexicon of their family, the things they could never truly explain to outsiders: that a book or a dress meant more than something to read or something to wear; that attention came with expectations that—like snow—drifted and settled and crushed you with their weight.

But the problem with rules, he reflected, was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on. He

Lexie was used to people wanting her opinion, to the point where she often assumed they did and just hadn't quite said so.

For her the magic was not what words had been, but what they were capable of: their ability to sketch, with one sweeping brushstroke, the contours of an experience, the form of a feeling. How they could make the effable effable, how they could never be fully unraveled, it held infinite mysteries and wonders and sometimes all you could do was stand agape, rubbing your eyes, trying to see properly.

the problem with rules, he reflected, was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on.

Most? What does that mean?

For Mia, however, the photographs were only a vague approximation of what she wanted to express, and she soon found herself not only altering the prints – with everything from ballpoint pen to splashes of laundry detergent – but experimenting with the camera itself, bending its limited range to her desires.

Some pictures belong to the person who took them. And some belong to the person inside them.