Quotes About Interpretation

How frustrating would it be if you're the president of the United States, and every single time you turn on the TV on most of the channels, they're misconstruing what you say?

The Constitution of the United States has absolutely nothing to say about a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Were the federal courts to recognize such a right, it would be completely without constitutional basis.

Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

The universal narrator knows all and can enter a character's head any time he chooses.

Though we explore in a culturally-conditioned way, the reality we sketch is universal.

A writer is justly called 'universal' when he is understood within the limits of his civilization, though that be bounded by a country or an age.

When I speak of artistic universals, I am not denying the enormous role played by culture. Obviously culture plays a tremendous role, otherwise you wouldn't have different artistic styles - but it doesn't follow that art is completely idiosyncratic and arbitrary, either, or that there are no universal laws.

Cultural values are, in themselves, neutral as well as universal, and so much depends on how individuals or ethnic groups use them. Values are influenced by so many factors such as geography, climate, religion, the economy and technology.

After talking to people and meeting them every day, I realize that a song can be written from one perspective with an objective in mind. What is crazy about it is that many different people can take one song a totally different way. That is so cool, since music is a universal thing and a very personal thing.

In a way, perhaps, there's an advantage of being on the edge of something and looking in as the observer, because as the filmmaker, you're the storyteller, and you're pulling out this universal story.

The subjectivization of the universal in art brings the universal downward on one hand, while on the other it helps raise the individual toward the universal.

I definitely think an on-screen experience is universal, in a way.

Making a movie is universal. Directing a movie is universal; it's a universal language.

You know, there's a saying in art that in order to be universal you must be specific. So I think every artist feels that he is dealing with specific things but that it also has significance universally.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of things American - but when American people do British stuff, it's so universally dreadful.

So the old Copenhagen interpretation needs to be generalized, needs to be replaced by something that can be used for the whole universe, and can be used also in cases where there is plenty of individuality and history.

The crucial discovery was made that, in order to become painting, the universe seen by the artist had to become a private one created by himself.

The age of the Earth is a hotly debated issue among evangelicals. Old Earthers believe, like most scientists, that the universe is billions of years old. Young Earthers measure the age of the universe in terms of thousands of years.

The beauty of science is to imagine more than we can prove. And string theory gives you a radically different interpretation of the universe.

I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.

The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.

The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.

I'm interested in the murky areas where there are no clear answers - or sometimes multiple answers. It's here that I try to imagine patterns or codes to make sense of the unknowns that keep us up at night. I'm also interested in the invisible space between people in communication; the space guided by translation and misinterpretation.