Quotes About Interpretation

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.

There is no truth. There is only perception.

brought [Mexican food] down to their lowest common denominator," wrote Diana Kennedy, with "an overly large platter of mixed messes, smothered with a shrill tomato sauce, sour cream, and grated yellow cheese preceded by a dish of mouth-searing sauce and greasy deep-fried chips.

Thomas loved words, particularly if he didn't understand them.

Anything that happens after I write a song...that's fine with me. It's up to the listener to read into it what they need from it. And that's part of the reason I write like I do, so I can leave the holes in the right places so people can say, 'Yeah, that happened to me,' and they're able to have their own little fantasy about it.

A Jesuit and a Franciscan are walking through a garden, silently engaged in prayer, when the Jesuit pulls out and lights up a big cigar. The Franciscan whispers, "My spiritual director says one should not smoke while one prays." The Jesuit replies, "Mine said it's all right if I pray while I smoke.")

true art, be it painting or novel or drama or music, selects and arranges.

Sometimes when reading Goethe I have a paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.

Bonnie Jean (who thinks all philosophers are idiots) has this quarrel with Wittgenstein, who in several places says that reddish green is inconceivable. Yet every summer, when our peppers are drying from green to red, one can see an intermediate stage that is precisely reddish green.

the names we use for things bear no inherent relation to the things themselves.

there is no way to devise an objective and non-arbitrary measure for comparing the overall complexity of any two given languages.

the Russian-American linguist Roman Jakobson encapsulated Boas's insight into a pithy maxim: "Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey." The crucial differences between languages, in other words, are not in what each language allows its speakers to express—for in theory any language could express anything—but in what information each language obliges it speakers to express.

we see in essence not with two eyes but with three: with the two eyes of the body and with the eye of the mind that is behind them. And it is in this eye of the mind in which the cultural-historical progressive development of the color sense takes place.

Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.

Japanese used to have a color word, ao, that spanned both green and blue.

envisaged Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday as men but Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday as women. Why should this be so?

Reading is a collaboration between the writer and reader. Both parties must keep that in mind when dealing with a work of fiction." {Guy Gavriel Kay}

Mocho was a Spanish word that meant maimed or referred to something that had been lopped off like a stump. To call Homer el mocho was, essentially, to call him "Stumpy" or "the maimed one." It doesn't sound particularly flattering, but among Spanish speakers the giving of nicknames is tantamount to a declaration of love. Things that would sound insulting outright in English were tokens of deep affection when said in Spanish.

He says,'Why is it love, Esther? Why call it that?' 'Because. Why is what you do art? Because you say so.

It's true about the running water. You can hear anything you want to in it.

When you read a poem, you may not get out of it all that the poet put into it, but you are different from the poet. You're different from everybody else who is going to read the poem, so you should take from it what you need. Use it personally.

Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.

Each body has its art...