Quotes About Interpretation

The sound of a windshield-wiper against a page of Diderot is all it took to turn it into Racinian dialogue

Vous ne pourrez jamais voir cette étoile comme je la voyais. Vous ne comprenez pas : elle est comme le cÅ"ur d'une fleur sans cÅ"ur.

We have said nothing about Chirico until we take into account his most personal views about the artichoke, the glove, the cookie, or the spool.

Art is the collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.

Modern history, both early and late, was made by Europeans, who "built a world around Europe", as historians "know", according to Braudel. That is indeed the "knowledge" of the European historians who themselves "invented" history and then put it to good use. There is not even an inkling of suspicion that it may have been the other way around, that maybe it was the world that made Europe.

The true painter strives to paint what can only be seen through his world.

One cannot create an art that speaks to men when one has nothing to say.

The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one's encounter with it in a book.

Bueno-explicó-(¿Qué más desea el lector:¿Explicó?¿Contó?¿Dijo?¿Musitó?¿Interecedió?¿Requirió?¿Sibiló?, esta última palabra para enriquecer el conocido y monotonísimo axioma del fanfarrón y pseudovanguardista J.COrtázar. ¡Ah, los caminos sin fin de la vana literatura!)

There is nuance now, subtext, body language, and pheromones.

Leroi-Gourhan écrit que, dans l'art des cavernes, signe féminin et blessure sont interchangeables : pour signifier la même idée, l'artiste, le penseur, l'écrivain paléolithique pouvait indifféremment figurer une vulve, une vache transpercée, le sang qui dégoutte d'une flèche. La vulve, le dol, la bête sous le merlin, le sang, sont synonymes ("Corps du roi", 40).

When you're playing a romantic version of a real person, you're playing a version of the truth.

It only becomes art if it touches other people.

Never try to convey your idea to the audience - it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.

When less than everything has been said about a subject, you can still think on further. The alternative is for the audience to be presented with a final deduction (...) no effort on their part. What can it mean to them when they have not shared with the author the misery and joy of bringing an image into being?

We have to assume that the people whose dwelling-places, artefacts, lives even, we are dealing with were rational, integrated, sane and sensible human beings. Then we look around at our own contemporaries and wonder how this belief can possibly be sustained.

There were two more cover versions. "One, believe it or not, is a noise-core reinterpretation of 'Candle in the Wind'." "By Elton John?" "By Elton John and Bernie Taupin." "What is noise-core?" said Nevada. "You don't want to know." "Is it noisy and hardcore?" "Exactly right.

By being published, any author's words cease to be his own, but rather belong to his reader.

Nothing during the American struggle against the slave system did more to wean religious and God-fearing men and women from the old interpretation of Scripture than the use of it to justify slavery.

Every science fiction is a reading of the period that produced it.

Postmodernism surely requires an even greater grasp of symbolism, as it's increasingly an art of gesture alone.

The difference between "significant" and "not significant" is not itself statistically significant

A work of art is...a bridge, however tenuous, between one mind and another.