Quotes About Interpretation

I am brazen. For me, creating means regurgitating, distorting, and assembling everything that has passed through me and continues to do so.

I wanted to be the conduit for somebody else's experiences, filtered through me, and passed on to other people. Which is the job description, really.

You write because you have an idea in your mind that feels so genuine, so important, so true. And yet, by the time this idea passes through the different filters of your mind, and into your hand, and onto the page or computer screen - it becomes distorted, and it's been diminished.

The botanist looking at a daffodil has no reason to dispute the right of the poet to look at the same object in a very different manner. There are many ways of playing. The point is not that one denies other people's games but that one is clear about the rules of one's own.

And the god of Ahab was called Beelzebub. Nowadays we call him Pir Bub.

Mrrrp? To anyone else in the Cahill universe, the high-pitched sound of the pet Egyptian Mau had a hundred different meanings: the playful mrrp , the I-want-red-snapper mrrp , the that-wasn't-enough-red-snapper mrrp , the thank-you-for-the-meager-portion-of-red-snapper mrrp . And on and on. But to Ian Kabra's ears, each was the I-hate-you-with-all-my-soul mrrp .

the Necronomicon is also a manual not only of dream interpretation (a la Freud) but of dream control.

Instead of Freud's famous Interpretation of Dreams it is a book of dreams that interprets us.

Hanisch, der mehr Bilder

hunches are mostly your brain telling you what you want to hear.

Traduttore, traditore.

Poisons and medicine are oftentimes the same substance given with different intents.

There's no such thing as an actor giving positive criticism to a director. The minute you say 'Don't you think it would look nicer...', that director's going to hate your guts. Particularly if it's a good idea.

A satisfactory translation is not always possible, but a good translator is never satisfied with it. It can usually be improved. (Newmark)

There is no such thing as a perfect, ideal, or 'correct' translation. A translator is always trying to extend his knowledge and improve his means of expression; he is always pursuing facts and words.

Translation is like love; I do not know what it is but I think I know what it is not.

Iconography, good iconography, strives to convey invisible reality in a visible form.

The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece with a difficult violin passage. After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, "I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it." —Thomas Powers

Freud was a genius; geniuses are bright but not necessarily right. What they do do, right or wrong, is to provide images that guide, or compel, the lives of the rest of us. If we are not careful we may accept the inevitability of these images. It seems that great men offer us a portion of reality and, because of their greatness, we take it for the whole.

There is a detailed breakdown by

The parable is given to us, but at the same time its full wealth of meaning will never be fully mined. It is not reducible to some clear, singular, scientific formula but rather gives rise to a multitude of commentaries. In opposition to this, many Christian communities view the stories and parables of the Bible as raw material to be translated into a single, understandable meaning rather than experienced as infinitely rich treasures that can speak to us in a plurality of ways.

If we imagine that our words are like arrows, then we can say that those arrows always fall short of the heavenly realm to which we aim them. In short, an emerging discourse acknowledges that speaking of God is never speaking of God but only ever speaking about our understanding of God.

For, if we shift our focus, it is possible to see that these ripples and ruptures within the text, far from counting against the work as something divinely inspired, are exactly what we would expect to find from that which is marked by and born out of the very depths of God.

it would seem almost impossible to argue that the biblical narrative is a calm, clear, and uncontentious text. Rather, the Scriptures reach our ears in an often ominous and scandalous tone. From the opening pages of this ancient text, we are confronted with a shocking series of ambiguous stories and complex conflicts that defy easy categorization and interpretation.