Quotes About Interpretation

That got her up on stage pretty quick, and she sang a song, which was in Spanish, so I don't know what it was about, except she seemed to be singing it mainly to Sharisse and it had a word that sounded like "poota" in it a lot.

Andy Warhol goes to the Big Soup Can in the Sky.

Good artists exist in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.

The idea we came up with, well before we left, was something we coined Performance Literature. Excuse the use of that second word, because I realize it's presumptuous. Also, excuse the first word, and the term in general.

You and I read the same books and hear the same sermons and we come away with different messages. That has to be evidence of some serious problem, right?

Oscar Wilde wrote, Good artists exist in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascination... [they] live the poetry [they] cannot write.

Subjectivity is just objectivity waiting for data," Delaney said.

We knew nothing; the gaps in our knowledge were random and annoying. They were potholes—they could be patched but they multiplied without pattern or remorse. And even if we knew something, had read something, were almost sure of something, we wouldn't ever know the truth, or come anywhere close to it. The truth had to be seen. Anything else was a story, entertaining but more embroidered fib than crude, shapeless fact.

Reassurance, like offence, is taken not given.

She points at my chest. "And much more interestingly, what's that?" "Blood," I say. She gets her camera out.

Give an economist a result you want, and he'll find the numbers to justify it.

Persons seeking to find scholarship herein will be sued; persons motivated to discover meaning will be exiled; persons seeking to find an allegory will be summarily ordained.

If it doesn't make sense the way I'm thinking it through, it means I'm thinking it through wrong. But then what way is right? He

will paint in pleasing colors." "How do you know which colors to use?" I asked. "There are instructions for each item on your workstation.

The difference between what I think matters and what you think does could likely fill a bookcase.

You were walking stiffly when you came in. Bone ache is a classic symptom." He pointed to her forehead. "And it's cold outside but your head is sweating. Another classic. And you've crossed and uncrossed your legs five times in the brief time you've been sitting there. Bladder problems. Another symptom.

In fact, after examining the historical documents and records surrounding the framing of the Second Amendment, if any individual or group still claims that the right to keep and bear arms is not an individual right, then that individual or group is just as likely - to use the words of nineteenth-century military chaplain William Biederwolf - to look all over the sky at high noon on a cloudless day and not see the sun.

Most of the time, the symptomatic meaning of an utterance is just too obvious to be noticed.

any utterance of more than trivial length has no one translation; all utterances have innumerably many acceptable translations.

No very good sense can be given to the idea that the elements of Euclidean geometry may be found in nature because either everything is found in nature or nothing is. Euclidean geometry is a theory, and the elements of a theory may be interpreted only in terms demanded by the theory itself. Euclid's axioms are satisfied in the Euclidean plane. Nature has nothing to do with it.

the almost universal habit of taking the content of our thought for 'a description of the world as it is'. Or we could say that, in this habit, our thought is regarded as in direct correspondence with objective reality. Since our thought is pervaded with differences and distinctions, it follows that such a habit leads us to look on these as real divisions, so that the world is then seen and experienced as actually broken up into fragments.

All art is unstable. Its meaning is not necessarily that implied by the author, There is no authoritative active voice. There are only multiple readings.

The British signal system was archaic. In battle, British ships hoisted enormous 'battle ensigns' to prevent them from being mistaken for the other side, but the signal flags remained as small as ever, and easy to misinterpret in the heat of battle.

I regret having been the bearer of ambiguous tidings.