Quotes About Interpretation

We now understand that the great American story is not confined to history books or political speeches. It is sung, and danced, and dramatized, and turned into verse. It is painted, and sculpted, and written, and filmed. Artists may not swear an oath to serve in government or the military, but they swear an oath to freedom of expression that is no less worthy of recognition, especially in a democracy such as ours.

Do not let the truth get in the way of a good story.

The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waved Bibles over their heads in the Civil War and justified it.

the Bible is only as good and decent as the person reading it.

the truth is often a mixed message

In 1843 he declared: "I believe the bible, as it ought to be, as it came from the pen of the original writers." He then gave an example of a problematic text that was resolved in his revision of the Old Testament, implying that he had corrected the text to its original reading.11

Smith's interpretation was wrong.

Alma's dependence on Hebrews 7 is not a matter of plagiarism but one of interpretive and conceptual borrowing.

Smith's procedure is similar to that of ancient pseudepigraphists who, in the words of one scholar, "created something new, an imaginary Sacred Past, the way it should have been.

I believe that Smith probably had in mind a number of shifting geographic models:

The ways in which art history has approached these tasks has changed over time.

according to their subject matter, or influence the way in which arts from non-Western cultures are discussed.

This book challenges such traditional ways of seeing and writing about art.

This relocation of the picture raises an important issue when looking at works of art – quite often they are no longer in their original location, and we see them as part of a historical sequence

The close relationship between the patron and the painting might lead us to question what this image was for.

identifying, categorizing, interpreting, describing, and thinking about works of art.

In this painting the artist has become more dominant than his subjects

You're not horribly terrible." He shook his head at her. "You say the nicest things." He held her gaze for a moment. "You're not trying to get into my pants, are you?

Astrology is a language. If you understand this language, the sky speaks to you.

Well," he murmured, watching her with a clever, knowing smile, "Given that ye didn't hit me this time, I'm thinkin' ye must have liked that." "I'd be a liar if I claimed otherwise.

Luz's manner of speaking made it clear that she had no idea what she might say next. It wasn't that she made things up, strictly speaking--only that facts were merely a point of departure for her.

In the eight-case system there is a tendency for precision of function while in the five-case system there is more room to see an author using a particular form to convey a fuller meaning than that of one function.

I'd gladly read something that is exceptionally stupid or bad as long as it was done by someone with some sort of personal vision, even if that person was a complete moron.

As Pablo Picasso (no slouch at theft himself) put it, "Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.