Quotes About Interpretation

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

Only describe, don't explain.

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that's a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy.

I've always thought elephants walk as if they have music being piped into their heads that no one else can hear. And from the roll of their hips and their swagger, I'm going to guess that the artist is Barry White.

it's quite difficult to know who owns a story. Is it the writer, who crafted it? The characters, who carry the plot forward? Or you, the reader, who breathes life into them? Or perhaps none of the three can exist without the other. Perhaps without this magical combination, a story would be nothing more than words on a page.

But we can't make policies based on religion when religion means different things to different people. Which leaves science. The science of reproduction is what it is. Conception is conception. You can decide the ethical value that has for you, based on your own relationship with God…but the policies around basic human rights with regard to reproduction shouldn't be up for interpretation.

Recollections are in the eye of the beholder. No two held side by side can ever quite match.

He remembered learning in one of his social studies classes that in the Old West, when Native Americans were thrown into jail, they sometimes dropped dead. The theory was that someone so used to the freedom of space couldn't handle the confinement, but Peter had another interpretation. When the only company you had was yourself, and when you didn't want to socialize, there was only one way to leave the room.

Art isn't what you see. It's what you remember.

You couldn't argue the facts; you could only change the lens through which you looked at them.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it really fall? If a character sits in a book and no one reads it, is he truly alive? As

I honestly can't tell if [she's] being intentionally mean or is she's truly that stupid.

She'd take these random occurrences and elevate them to oracles; she'd pretend that they were enough to justify her actions. Or lack therof.

But Edward doesn't even flinch; it's as if he's reading the text of me with some magic internal Rosetta stone that makes him understand what I say is not what I mean at all.

What is ethical to a lawyer differs from what's ethical to the rest of the world.

It's easy to say you will do what's right and shun what's wrong, but when you get close enough to any given situation, you realize that there is no black or white. There are gradations of gray.

If you end your story, it's a static work of art, a finite circle. But if you don't, it belongs to anyone's imagination. It stays alive forever

It is remarkable how events and truths can be reshaped, like wax that's sat too long in the sun. There is no such thing as a fact. There is only how you saw the fact, in a given moment. How you reported the fact. How your brain processed that fact. There is no extrication of the storyteller from the story.

Over the years, he's learned empathy the way I might learn Greek, translating an image or situation in the clearinghouse of his mind and trying to attach the appropriate sentiment to it, but never really fluent in the language.

A trial, it often came down to who had the best story.

I'm very sorry - the only words that could not rework into anything but what they signified.

It's because you don't just tell stories," Darija explained. "You paint with words.

She found out that you could do a lot of editing with three words, if they were yes, no, and shit.

when someone looks in a certain direction as they process a question or as they answer it, is that they are thinking—it is not per se indicative of deception.