Quotes About Interpretation

Beneath every history, another history.

So much has been said between them that is is needless to add a marginal note. It is not for him now to gloss the text of their dealings, nor append a moral.

Leases, writs, statutes, all are written to be read, and each person reads them by the light of self-interest.

There are codes so subtle that they change their whole meaning in half a line, or in a syllable, or in a pause, a caesura.

History is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past

What does St. Paul mean when he says Jesus was made a little lower than the angels?

I listened to the murmurs within his silence. Construction can be put on silence.

You must believe everything and nothing of what you read.

Life is not like detective stories. There is a wider scope for interpretation. The answers to all the questions that beset you are not in facts, which are the greatest illusion of all, but in your own heart, in your own habits, in your limitations, in your fear.

What kind of persons writes fiction about the past?" - "The kind of person for whom one lifetime is not enough." - Hilary Mantel

If another man were saying this, he'd be trying to start a fight. When Thomas More says it, it leads to an invitation to dinner.

how to retell exactly what had been said and done, without putting your own interpretation on it, and submit it to another judgement? It wasn't possible.

There are codes so subtle that they change their whole meaning in half a line, or in a syllable, or in a pause. . .

No sane person should believe that something is subjective merely because it cannot be settled beyond controversy.

We cannot live in a world interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.

The more minimal the art, the more maximum the explanation.

How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together [a meeting of believers] each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. 1 Corinthians 14:26

If you understood everything in the mind of an author then reading his books would be no fun at all.

Când vine vorba de aman?ii unei femei, se aplic? îndeob?te aritmetica negrilor australieni: ei num?r? doar pân? la trei. Tot ce dep??e?te trei se cheam? "mul?i".

The better the book the more room for the reader.

Stories can justify anything. It doesn't matter if the boy with the heart of stone is a hero or a villain; it doesn't matter if he got what he deserved or if he didn't. No one can reward him or punish him, save the storyteller.

Because stories tell a truth, if not precisely the truth.

Rules are different for poets.

Jones looks like he wants to slug me, which is only subtly different from his usual way of looking at me like I'm a slug.