Quotes About Interpretation

The artist Paul Klee described drawing a picture as taking a line for a walk. I have borrowed his words to explain my approach to writing; when I write a novel it is like I am taking a thought for a walk.

To use the past to justify the present is bad enough—but it's just as bad to use the present to justify the past.

In just the first letter of the OED you will find words as magnificent as agathokakological (composed of good and evil), as delicately shaded as addubitation (the suggestion of doubt), and as odd as antithalian (opposed to fun or festivity). I

Among people who might be described as having at least a passing regard for the English language, there are few instances of usage that evoke a desire to mutilate more than the perceived misuse of literally.

No one is yet using figuratively to mean literally; the confusion, such as it is, is all in one direction.

Every dogma embodies some shade of truth to give it seeming currency.

Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.

The cool thing about being a songwriter, or a writer, I guess, in general, you can take on a lot of different things, experience a lot of different things, just by writing about them.

People tend to seek and latch on to information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs while avoiding, disregarding, or minimizing evidence that challenges them.

I do not say what I feel, and people often take that for shyness, even kindness.

Learning to listen, letting people finish their sentences, and most of all, the habit of noticing the difference between what people say and how they say it. {on the habits of psychoanalytic training and practice applied to fiction writing} The gap between what people tell you and what's really going on is what interests me.

He said, You know what Oscar Wilde said—women are meant to be loved, not understood. Applies to both of them, darling. And I nodded, although it seemed to me that I was going to be a woman too and I would like it if someone thought they should understand me.

An old supply pastor, many years before, had taught him that: What is offered in faith by one person can be translated by the Holy Spirit into what the other person needs to hear and see. The space between them is holy ground, and the Holy Spirit uses that space in ways that not only translate, but transcend.

For some reason, it takes my brain a moment to process…the open-close symbols on elevators, which is which.

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

We do not ask the trees to teach us moral lessons, and only the Salvation Army feels it necessary to pin texts upon them. We know that these texts are ridiculous, but many of us do not yet see that to write an obvious moral all over a work of art, picture, statue, or poem, is not only ridiculous, but timid and vulgar. We distrust a beauty we only half understand, and rush in with our impertinent suggestions.

People experience books so very differently.

She loved the way you could transform the meaning of a scene with how you played it.

I'm going to look for the compliment buried in that remark

Perfume makers know that, owing to genetic differences in how we experience fragrances, about half the people who inhale jasmine will think of honey, and the other half, unfortunately, will think of urine. They're both right.

Has to pay for his company. If you take my meaning.

You know, when there's a noise breaking into your sleep and you don't want to wake up, you can dream a long complicated dream that explains the whole noise away.

Reducing parables to a single meaning destroys their aesthetic as well as ethical potential.