Quotes About Interpretation

He guessed that in Washington two conversations often went on simultaneously: the one you meant and the one you said out loud.

the English and the Americans were divided by a common language.

Knowles," said Emma

Faulkner didn't put those

to be in the middle distance, and he was not perceptibly

What are you getting at?

We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...

Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights...How wonderful it was when one sentence followed logically from the sentence before!...There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world.

Continuu sa cred ca aceste semne negre facute pe hartia alba poarta cea mai adanca semnificatie, ca daca o tin tot asa cu scrisul, as putea reusi sa prind curcubeul constiintei intr-un borcan.

But even as we make these conclusions we feel our throats plugging up, because they are both true and untrue. So much has been written about the girls in the newspapers, so much has been said over backyard fences, or related over the years in psychiatrists' offices, that we are certain only of the insufficiency of explanations.

Instead of eating his lunch, he told you what Oblonsky and Levin had for lunch in Anna Karenina. Or, describing a sunset from Daniel Deronda, he failed to notice the one that was presently falling over Michigan.

Miért tanulunk történelmet? Azért, hogy megértsük a jelent vagy azért, hogy megússzuk?

There are always alternative interpretations of the same data. It is often the case, however, that the alternatives that are rejected are treated as if they don't exist. But they do. And we should be aware not only of their existence and potential viability, but of the possibility that the hypotheses that we might embrace so strongly today may very well be the rejects of tomorrow.

We are not passive recipients but active participants in our own process of perception (Nancy Kanwisher)

It is wrong," Bohr once said, "to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.

I am reminded that while New Yorkers say standing on line, the rest of the English-speaking world says standing in line.

yesterday in the airport I spent ten minutes expounding on the virtues of Bethenny Frankel from the New York season of the Real Housewives until I realized the person next to me had been talking about a book by Viktor Frankl.

They could not make out the exact words coming from their captain's mouth, but it was fairly clear he wasn't reciting poetry.

Anderson sent me to give you this he said. I believe the subtext was kiss and makeup. This time I was sure I made a face. I rather kiss a copperhead. I grabbed the envelop from his hand. He laughed and held up his hands in surrender. Don't worry. It was only a figure of speech.

The question of what kind of a thing a text or poem is now becomes a function neither of what the poet might have intended by its words nor of what the conventions of grammar and meaning might seem to require of them, but rather of the reader's irreducibly subjective experience in her encounter with those words.

Here it's probably worth pointing out that the original meaning of advice was "judgment.

Jenny Diski lies here. But tells the truth over there",' I instructed. 'Also, I'd like a dove, a winged angel, an anchor and an open book, properly carved on a nice piece of granite.

Wenn man verstehen will, was einer meint oder sagt, muss man im Grunde das, was er meint oder sagt, immer schon wissen. Ist dann ein gelungener Dialog nur Wiedererkennen? Und das Verstehen nicht etwas ein Weg, sondern vielmehr ein Zustand?

You confuse me with something that is in you. I will not predict how you want to use me.