Quotes About Interpretation

The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.

No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.

It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about.

The old tale of Sleeping Beauty might end happily in French or English, but he was in Russia, and only a fool would want to live through the Russian version of any fairy tale.

Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.

You who speak languages, you are such liars.

Two sides of the same coin, but which side is which?

Rigg) had often complained that all these languages were useless, and Father had only said, A man who speaks but one language understands none.

It [seed of doubt] made Ender listen to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

Then he was done. He pulled away, rolled onto his back. "I'm sorry," he said. "You're welcome," she said. She believed in answering what people meant, not what they said.

All these uses a valid; all these reading of the book are correct. For all these readers have placed themselves inside this story, not as spectators, but as participants, and so have looked at the world of Ender's Game, not with my eyes only, but also with their own.

Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?

The story in my mind is nothing but a hope; the text of the story is the tool I created in order to try to make that hope a reality. The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.

I just don't know if people actually perceive which events are miracles and which are not. There are no doubt many miracles claimed which were not miracles at all. There are also probably many miracles that no one recognized when they occurred.

How could Quing-jao know what the gods meant by anything?

He thinks I'm like him, Mazer realized. That's what we do as humans; it's how we read minds. We assume that other people think like we do. So if we're nasty and suspicious and conniving we assume that everyone is as nasty and suspicious and conniving as we are.

It takes one evangelist to understand another.

The story, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds... transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears... If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.

That is the tragedy of language, my friend. Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong.

Everything we do means something.

Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.

I want to understand everything, said Miro. I want to know everything and put it all together to see what it means. Excellent project, she said. It will look very good on your résumé.