Quotes About Interpretation

A poet swallows life and exhales painted words.

A poet rarely swashes ink but mostly mists at subtleties.

You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it technically tick, and say to yourself, when the works are laid out before you, the vowels, the consonants, the rhymes or rhythms, 'Yes, this is it. This is why the poem moves me so...' But you're back again where you began. You've back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps in the works of the poem so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in.

Modern poets mix much water with their ink.

Modern poets are bells of lead. They should tinkle melodiously but usually they just klunk.

The eye is the only note-book of the true poet...

What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?

Democrats think the glass is half full; Republicans think the glass is theirs.

It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.

Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-and-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

There is no way you can use the word "reality" without quotation marks around it.

A picture, it is said, is worth a thousand words, but cannot a few well-spoken words convey as many pictures?

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.

I really didn't say everything I said.

I think I'll believe in Gosh instead of God. If you don't believe in Gosh too, you'll be darned to heck.

The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.

It were vain for me to endeavor to interrupt the Silence. She cannot be done into English. For six thousand years men have translated her with what fidelity belonged to each, and still she is little better than a sealed book. A man may run on confidently for a time, thinking he has her under his thumb, and shall one day exhaust her, but he too must at last be silent...

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

Silence is also speech.

You know you're a skydiver when you know what the lines mean on a weather map.

Is a smile a question? Or is it the answer?

Biblical exegesis without controls is apt to run away into total subjectivity.

Lies in meinen Augen, was ich dir nicht alles sagen kann.

Will your friend allow curry powder on her raw foods?" "Not allowed, my dear," said Nat Morrill. "Curry powder is already a mixture, thus impure. In any case, she does not allow one to sprinkle something on top of something else." "This is worse than kashruth," Leah said. "What about sushi?" "Not allowed. It's raw, but still, it's a combination, because of the rice, the seaweed." "Sashimi?" "Fine. But no joining, no marriage of the fish with soy sauce or pickled ginger, no green shiso leaf.