Quotes About Interpretation

The universe is defined not by what one sees, what one says, but precisely by what one does not see, precisely what one does not say: by the difference between the one and the other.

History has no single signification; what we do always has several senses, and this is how an existential conception of history is distinguished from both materialism and spiritualism.

Signs do not simply evoke other signs for us and so on without end, and language is not like a prison we are locked into or a guide we must blindly follow; for what these linguistic gestures mean and gain us such complete access to that we seem to have no further need of them to refer to it finally appears at the intersection of all of them.

The body is to be compared, not to a physical object, but rather to a work of art.

Every sensation is already pregnant with a sense.

Melanie Klein had distinguished the concept of ambivalence from that of ambiguity. Ambivalence is where the subject makes two alternative images for the same being; alternatives that are not seen as representing the same object. Ambiguity is an adult concept. The subject perceives two images, but he knows that they apply to the same object.

We must recognize the indeterminate as a positive phenomenon.

If objects must never show me more than one of their sides, then this is because I myself am in a certain place from which I can see them, but which I cannot see.

Perception is already expression.

There are certain pieces of music that are always attached to certain books.

She didn't really enjoy reading but she liked how the books were clues. Each one a piece in a puzzle. Even when they didn't fit together, they revealed a little more about what kind of picture she was making.

Words," said the host, at length, "is worse'n bullets. You never know what they'll hit.

Ich muß gestehen, daß ich zuerst den Eindruck hatte, unter Verrückte gefallen zu sein.

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

You can put anything into words, except your own life

It is the duty and privilege of historians to deploy relativism in a fashion that cannot be expected of contemporary participants.

Cubism is ... a picture for its own sake. Literary Cubism does the same thing in literature, using reality merely as a means and not as an end.

The world according to Heidegger is like a prep school for Calvinists.

All theology represents an intellectual rationalization of the possession of sacred values... Every theology... presupposes that the world must have a meaning, and the question is how to interpret this meaning so that it is intellectually conceivable.

It's the intellectual who transforms the concept of the world into the problem of meaning.

I know all about you from your books,' she said. 'But in spite of that you're still a riddle to me.' Have you come here to solve it?' I asked.

We live in a world of shadows ... we are not what we are, but what is said of us and what we read in others' eyes.

Since you make them evil or good by your own thoughts about them, it is the ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.

Even impersonal events can be interpreted, and reacted to, as affronts to our self-esteem. The bus we wanted to catch had to be late; it had to go and rain when we had planned to play golf; traffic had to get into a snarl just when we needed to catch the plane. We react with anger, resentment, self-pity, or in other words, unhappiness.