Quotes About Interpretation

You don't paint souls, you paint bodies, and the soul shines through.

Why should a word in a recipe be less important than a word in a novel? One can lead to physical indigestion, the other to mental. I

Do you think Kinkade is Welland-Dowd? she wondered Chase burst into laughter so booming that every head on the street rotated, startled. Oh,God. She'd just understood when she'd said it aloud. Welland-Dowd. Well-endowed.

One only ever saw a fraction of someone, whatever it was they chose to show you, and extrapolated a whole person from that. And saw them through a prism of one's own prejudices.

Having an interpreter doesn't mean you are getting the right information. Immediately it should raise the red flag.

To me, a recently read novel was like a miniature planet: only a few hours earlier I had been breathing its air and living contentedly among its people - and now I was expected to pronounce a judgement about its worth?

but an idea had presented itself to him, knocking at his brain like a nighttime traveler, and instead of shutting the door in its face, Browles built it a fire, he drew a chair for it up to the hearth and spent half a decade trying to decipher and then convey what it struggled to tell him. He was patient and industrious and quietly determined. Buffeted by setbacks and rejection and his own limitations, he persevered.

We argued for weeks about the existence and then the location of a particular semicolon

Believing in books is a lot like believing in God.

The greatest tales, well told, awaken the fears and longings of the listeners. Each man hears a different story. Each is touched by it according to his inner self. The words go to the ear, but the true message travels straight to the spirit.

There is no good or evil, save in the way you see the world. There is no dark or light save in your own.

Johnny was sobbing in shuddering gasps, telling me his small tale of woe, that the world was suddently different, and that he wanted me to make it better, right now please. --Liadan's interpretation of her baby's cries.

A tale can start in many ways. Thus, it is many tales, and at the same time each of these is but one way of telling the same story.

There is no good or evil, save in the way you see the world. There is no dark or light, save in your own vision. All changes in the blink of an eyelid; yet all remains the same.

Und wer unbedingt diese Unansehnlichkeit betrachten will, der wird zugleich jegliche vorhandene Schönheit zunichte machen, gerade wie wenn er ein Licht von hundert Kerzenstärken auf die Wandnische eines Teeraums richtete.

Während die Abendländer den Schmutz radikal aufzudecken und zu entfernen trachten, konservieren ihn die Ostasiaten sorgfältig und ästhetisieren ihn, so wie er ist - könnte man, wenn man wollte, beschönigend sagen; aber wie auch immer, es ist unser Schicksal, dass wir nun einmal Dinge mit Spuren von Menschenhänden, Lampenruß, Wind und Regen lieben oder auch daran erinnernde Farbtönungen und Lichtwirkungen.

Well, first I would ask them if they had read the Bible; then I would ask them if they had understood it.

dream interpretation were ways of converting our little personal miseries into big robust myths

Quoting Scripture texts is different than shaping a worldview around them.

Ceea ce simÅ£ea pentru ea era una, iar ceea ce îi f?cuse ea era altceva.

Wouldn't it be common sense to ask at once what I meant, without brooding over it?

When the sister said that the sea was expressionless, the brother answered that that was not true at all, that it was the best of talkers.

I could make nothing of the terribly vague answers I got, which I could believe or doubt as I liked.

Culoarea ochilor nu-i decât expresia cuvintelor.