Quotes About Interpretation

If someone tells you a lie, they're not telling you the truth, but they are telling you something. It just takes longer to figure out what.

Gezichten kennen vele mimieken, die allemaal wel iets weergeven van wat daarachter leeft, maar het evengoed kunnen vertekenen.

Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.

The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions. On the other hand, but more slowly, life has thrown light for me on the meaning of books.

When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it has missed the point.

When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it has missed its point.

Like everyone who's ever translated this text, I had some fun.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

I wonder what Adam and Evethink of it by this time.

I, too, dislike it. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it, after all, a place for the genuine.

when the daily reality presents itself as uncomprehendable, we fashion our own myths and then hold those phony truths to be inalienable.

Si por una malinterpretada libertad no fuéramos habitualmente fieles a esos compromisos de amor, caeríamos en la incoherencia, y si no rectificáramos con humildad, nuestra vida iría perdiendo poco a poco significado: de peregrinos nos transformaríamos en errantes.

for even the best artwork is a static thing of the eye alone, and words are by their nature linear.

And since human minds are very good at finding patterns, and ours had recently shifted from looking for bad luck to looking for good, we wrote off setbacks as expected, rather than proof of misfortune.

le parole hanno una vita propria, come la gente o gli animali. Possono palpitare, svanire o amplificarsi. Passare attraverso le parole è come camminare attraverso la folla. Rimangono delle facce, delle sagome che si dileguano presto dal nostro ricordo, oppure si fissano, non si sa bene perché.

confirmation bias means we look for and find evidence to support our beliefs. We cherry-pick information that confirms what we already know, while ignoring (consciously and unconsciously) information that challenges our existing beliefs.

Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, "What else could this mean?" Shannon L. Alder

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. William Shakespeare

Not what we experience, but how we perceive what we experience, determines our fate.

innuendos—and sometimes they weren't even

it is safer to wander without a guide through an unmapped country than to trust completely a map traced by men who came only as tourists and often with biased judgement.

The philosophical system with which we try to interpret contents of the unconscious is open to still more, and that is the way in which an interpretation will not have a destructive effect. One should keep to what is possible and infer at the same time that there is a lot more to it so that there is room for growth.

Eugene Peterson claims that "to eyes that can see, every bush is a burning bush:' Poems, when they are doing what they do best, offer us a glimpse of that fire.

Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.