Quotes About Interpretation

cease to regard the canvas as a surface on which to paint a picture, but instead as a surface on which to record an event

Is Moby Dick the whale or the man?

This is what it means to create: not to make something out of nothing, but to make order out of chaos. A creative scientist or historian does not make up facts but orders facts; he sees connections between them rather than seeing them as random data. A creative writer does not make up new words but arranges familiar words in patterns which say something fresh to us.

Religion is not primarily a set of beliefs, a collection of prayers, or a series of rituals. Religion is first and foremost a way of seeing. It can't change the facts about the world we live in, but it can change the way we see those facts, and that in itself can often make a real difference.

Many biblical verses are like inkblot tests, revealing more about us than about the text in question.

Art is the expression of the invisible by means of the visible

He had been able to repress every disrespectful word; but the flashing eye, the gloomy and troubled brow, were part of a natural language that could not be repressed,-- indubitable signs, which showed too plainly that the man could not become a thing.

Instead, I value my images by what's in them; what they convey; and how people respond, react, pause while viewing them, or, perhaps, are enlightened by them.

I'm not a music lover in the sense that I look for something to have on. I've never had that attitude to music.

But there's a disconnect between the eyes and the mouth. Like the eyes are saying one thing and the mouth is about to

Each provision of the Constitution is important, and I cannot subscribe to a doctrine of unlimited absolutism for the First Amendment at the cost of downgrading other provisions.

The photographs that excite me are photographs that say something in a new manner; not for the sake of being different but ones that are different because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself.

I'm not trying to be romantic. I think you can tell when people are trying to be sexy onstage. When I was doing 'All the Way ' I was really thinking about my wife. People don't know my personal experience, but they can tell it's an honest interpretation.

Making the pictures ridiculous is what enables you to really see them; a logical picture is usually too vague.

Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between what they say they're saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest.

Wanneer de schrijver niets anders doet dan zijn ervaringen en hersenschimmen neerschrijven, is hij geen schrijver maar een verteller: iemand, die iets verliest. Van belang is alleen wat er op het papier gebeurt, in de vormgeving, datgene, wat hij niet had voorzien, datgene, wat hij niet wist, datgene, wat hij niet was, datgene, wat hij vindt: dat alleen is creatie.

Boeken die niet gebaseerd zijn op een schema zijn weekdieren.

Gelukkig is het geschrevene iets dat hoorbaar is zonder gehoord te hoeven worden. Zelfs het bescheidenste woordje dat ik neerschrijf, het woordje "zwijgen" bijvoorbeeld, overstemt het inferno in die stenen put.

You see what you want to see, and you hear what you want to hear.

The examination of even a small part of the world's music and what it means to various peoples and to various creative persons is in some ways rather like a plunge into dominant night. It is a plunge into a realm of the comparatively

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

Do you see things in black and white, or are there shades of gray for you?" "I hope there's gray...Black and white make things easier, but only if you don't want to think.

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.

Her very frowns are fairer far Than smiles of other maidens are.