Quotes About Interpretation

The Bible is a library of books reflecting how human beings have understood the divine.

right isn't even the best way to think about the Bible. How about dancing? You dance with it. And to dance, you have to hear its music. And then you move in response to it.

So if that's it, if that's the point of it all, if that's the ticket, the center, the one unavoidable reality, the heart of the Christian faith, why is it that no one used the phrase until the last hundred years or so?

determining the essence of different points of view (what Lyndon Johnson called "listening")

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.

Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.

Women talk when they want to. Or don't.

Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art. But it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood. Most of these jokers don't want to use language you and I can learn; they would rather sneer because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If anything. Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.

Call it that if you like. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.

I was not giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers... It is an invitation to think -- not to believe.

Do you speak English? Certainly. And I understand American.

Youse guys think this deleted outfit is a blankety-blank nursery. Well, it ain't! See? —Remark attributed to a Hellenic corporal before the walls of Troy, 1194 B.C.

Science fiction means different things to different people. When I make a word do a lot of work like that, said Humpty Dumpty, I always pay it extra—in which case the term science fiction has piled up a lot of expensive overtime.

Smith felt distressed at the failure to respond in kind and interpreted it as failure on his own part. He realized miserably that, time after time, he had managed to bring agitation to these other creatures when his purpose had been to create oneness.

You evaded my question." "Then perhaps you had better assume that I intended to evade it.

The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can prove anything from it.

A paradox may be paradoctored.

Talking with a Martian is something like talking with an echo. You don't get any argument but you don't get results either.

Smith used English as one might use a code book, with tedious and imperfect translation for each symbol.

Prof's purpose was to short him out – but sometimes Prof was too subtle; some people talk better if they breathe vacuum.

I say 'art' advisedly, for art is undefined, undefinable, and without limits. I can use the word without fear of misusing it, for it has no exact meaning. There are as many meanings as there are artists.

Figures don't lie, but liars figure.

Abstract design is all right—for wallpaper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity and terror. What modern artists do is pseudo-intellectual masturbation. Creative art is intercourse, in which the artist renders emotional his audience.