Quotes About Interpretation

You can get into trouble really fast because it's often not what you say or mean, it's what they hear and understand. And be careful not to take offense when they mean no offense.

As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw but what they wished me to see.

Congress has the power to make laws, but the president can veto them, and vetoes can be overridden only by congressional supermajorities. The president and his executive branch enforce the laws, but there is congressional and judicial oversight. The judiciary interprets the Constitution and the laws, but judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Jackson read the Indian treaties in much the same way that Democrats and progressives today read the U.S. Constitution. They care little about what it says; they interpret it to mean what they want it to mean. Jackson

Thus the rigid North-South interpretation of the Civil War conceals—and is intended to conceal—the active complicity of Democrats across the country to save, protect, and even extend the "peculiar institution.

Dinty W. Moore

My job is not to just set down events that happened to me. My job is to create an experience for a reader." —Mary Karr

The writer of nonfiction might be starting with events that really happened, but recreating them is an imaginative feat. Ordering them is an imaginative feat. Making sense of them is an imaginative feat." —Robin Hemley

Books leave gestures in the body; a certain way of moving, of turning, a certain closing of the eyes, a way of leaving, hesitations. Books leave certain sounds, a certain pacing; mostly they leave the elusive, which is all the story. They leave much more than the words.

Dali's Reclining Woman Wearing a Chemise looks like a dead slaughtered doll, and I can see preying eagles, broken arrows, and jazz musicians in Jackson Pollock, and because I believe that Man Ray and Duchamp were lovers.

I think it [religion] is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt.

Art could state very little - it's whole business is to evoke responses.

When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing a book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it.

They said this flat was converted but I think its still heathen

He can be so appreciative of all forms of art, but so matter-of-fact and unemotional about it.

The one Bach piece I learnt made me feel I was being repeatedly hit on the head with a teaspoon

When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it — or rather, it is like living it.

Because there's so much that just can't be said plainly. Try describing what beauty is - plainly - and you'll see what I mean.

When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it – or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.

The world is full of abandoned meanings. In the commonplace I find unexpected themes and intensities.

There's always more to it. This is what history consists of. It is the sum total of the things they aren't telling us.

When I work, I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that's not familiar. But I'm not trying to manipulate reality. This is just what I see and hear.

A fact is innocent until someone wants it; then it become intelligence.

The grasp of objects that bind us to some betokening.