Quotes About Interpretation

Read the heart and not the letter for the pen cannot draw near the good intent.

How wrong are those simpletons, of whom the world is full, who look more at... color than at the figures which show spirit and movement.

Don't regard my characters as symbols of a determined society. See them as something that sparks a reaction within you so that they become a personal experience. The critic is a spectator and an artist insofar as he transforms the work into a personal thing of his own.

When we say a character in my films doesn't function, we mean he doesn't function as a person, but he does function as a character that is, until you take him as a symbol. At that point it is you who are not functioning. Why not simply accept him as a character, without judging him? Accept him for what he is. Accept him as a character in a story, without claiming that he derives or acquires meaning from that story. There may be meanings, but they are different for all of us.

I'm not saying that his views are anti-American. That was a misreading of what I said and so I don't believe that that's my position.

Perception can make reality

These interpretations of Sor Juana's decision to join a religious order hold Sor Juana to feminine standards of piety. In other words, because Sor Juana did not express her faith in the manner typical of the women of her era (through mystical writing and mortification, for example), she is not interpreted as pious.

There are two "camps" which interpret Sor Juana's final years: the Catholic interpretation sees her renunciation as a turn to spirituality and devotion, while the secular camp sees Sor Juana as a woman persecuted by the Church. Both positions are ideological, for they are based on a desire to depict Sor Juana as either converting to or surrendering to the desires of the institutional Church. Both are too simplistic.

When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn't acting. It's following instructions. James Dean

We believe the explanation we hear last. It's one of the ways in which narrative influences our perception of truth. We crave finality, and end to interpretation, not seeing that this too, the tying up of all loose ends in the last chapter, is only a storytelling ruse. The device runs contrary to experience, wouldn't you say? Time never simplifies - it unravels and complicates. Guilty parties show up everywhere. The plot does nothing but thicken.

At their first meeting, she handed George a reading list made up of French and German philosophers. When George settled down to read these texts, he discovered something astonishing: the meaning of each word was clear and the meaning of sentences baffled. Insignificant yet crucial words like 'however' and 'which'- words whose meaning was surely beyond dispute - had been deployed in ways that made no sense.

Si la ciencia ha de avanzar, lo que necesitamos es la capacidad de experimentar, honestidad a la hora de informar de los resultados (los resultados han de difundirse sin que nadie diga cómo le hubiera gustado que fueran los resultados) y finalmente, una cosa importante, la inteligencia para interpretar los resultados.

People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions.

Where the world is full of a thousand colors for those who love books, I suspect it is simply black and gray to everyone else.

memoirs are not open doors into another person's house. They are more like broken windows, with the owner trying to explain away all of the damage.

In the arts the way in which an idea is rendered, and the manner in which it is expressed, is much more important than the idea itself. —JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID

History is made not of facts set in stone but of the stories we tell.

I try to be confident, always have, but despite my best efforts, sometimes I come off like I'm a total..." "Dick?" I finished for him. "I'm just randomly picking words out of the air. Tell me if you think I'm close.

Truth, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder.

the truth isn't in the facts, and the facts don't always tell the truth. The truth is in the experience.

For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation will suffice.

Men prefer brief praise, pitched high; women are satisfied with praise in a lower key, just so it goes on and on.

A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.