Quotes About Interpretation

You can't reconstruct a story—you can't even know what the story is—if everyone is saying, "Mistakes were made." Who made them? Everybody made them and no one did, and it's history anyway, so let's forget about it. Every story is a history, however, and when there is no comprehensible story, there is no history.

The act of writing anything can be as much consent as creation.

As one gets older, the story of Hansel and Gretel becomes more interesting only when told from the point of view of the witch.

I am pleased to have an enemy who is not symbolic.

Literature is not an instruction manual.

We hung up and I thought, boy, he's a speaker. For a minute there, I thought it was Patton.

An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing is a simple way.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

After all, there are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.

The people are applauding you because none of them understands you and applauding me because everybody understands me. [Charlie Chaplin to Albert Einstein]

Tongue; well that's a wery good thing when it an't a woman's.

The bearings of this observation lays in the application on it.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk.

You know, there is no language of vegetables, which converts a cucumber into a formal declaration of attachment.

whip and coachman and guard, however, in combination, had read

Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.)

I perceive your tongue is," returned madame; "and what the tongue is, I suppose the man is.

Each spoke in her own language; neither understood the other's words; both were very watchful, and intent to deduce from look and manner, what the unintelligible words meant.

my first impression of those people, founded on face and manner alone, was invariably true. My mistake was in suffering them to come nearer to me and explain themselves away.

those questions at sufficient length. If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden in mine,—which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity,—it is the key to many reservations. I felt convinced that if I described Miss Havisham's as my eyes had seen it, I should not be understood.

conventional phrases are a sort of fireworks, easily let off, and liable to take a great variety of shapes and colours not at all suggested by their original form.

Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.)

He dicho: ¡Que Dios los bendiga! —corrige el primero, volviendo bruscamente la cabeza. —Yo he dicho ¡Que Dios los salve! —insiste el segundo—. ¿Encuentra usted alguna diferencia?