Quotes About Interpretation

Artists teach critics what to think. Critics repeat what the artists teach them.

What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.

I never think my music isn't easy until I got to teach it to other people.

Conducting is a strange thing to teach.

I've always been - as a teacher, as graduate student, as a student, and I think, really, as a child - I've been interested in poems, but not so much for what the take home pay is, what you might sum up from them in moral or intellectual terms or whatever, but what's in the certain lines and how lines relates to other lines.

If we had in this room a hundred teachers, good teachers from good schools, and asked them to define the word education, there would be very little general agreement.

I remember when I was a kid in school and teachers would explain things to me about what I read, and I'd think, Where did they get that? I didn't read that in there. Later you look at it and think, That's kind of an interesting idea.

A camera teaches you how to see without a camera.

I think most people gain some sense of how to look at a painting, but no one ever teaches you how to look at a piece of silver.

A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips, teaches us to perceive reality differently.

Much of the way we understand the world is through images. That's what I think good art does - it teaches you how to see the historical moment that you live in.

People think a director teaches acting. But in good films a director doesn't.

Good teaching is creating really interesting generalizations out of war stories.

Teaching regularly has made me an even more adept reader, I think. The kind of teaching I do is more like editing than anything else. The kind of editing book editors used to do before lunch. The kind of editing I used to do as a radio documentary maker.

What is the point of teaching how to analyse a poem or a piece of Shakespeare but not to analyse the Internet?

Early in my teaching days, the kids asked me the meaning of a poem. I replied, 'I don't know any more than you do. I have ideas. What are your ideas?' I realized then that we're all in the same boat. What does anybody know?

The reason Buddhism can be so naturalised is because, stripped of its supernatural elements, its core teachings can be giving a sound, secular philosophical interpretation. In other words, it becomes a religion acceptable to the contemporary, naturalistic mind only when it ceases to be a religion.

Republican politicians often evoke the Bible when it suits their purposes. But they disregard some of its most important teachings when formulating policy. This includes the story of Noah's Ark.

I've always thought of the process of creating ballets as being this kind of team effort. It's not like being a painter, where you have your paint, and you have canvas, and you just go at it. I'm working with these living, breathing, functioning human beings, and they have their own thoughts and ideas about what works well movement-wise.

Algunas cosas no necesitan palabras, dice al cabo de un momento, y me pregunto si aún se refiere al sonido. Todo necesita una palabra, insisto. Necesitamos saber cómo describir el mundo. Si no, caeríamos en la ignorancia.

WHAT DOES SALMON HAVE TO DO with the Warriors?" I asked. Sydney shot me a wry look. "Psalms, not salmon.

What was the correct procedure here? Was he supposed to kiss me? Was I supposed to let him? Had that been the real price of my salad?

Never does a man portray his own character more vividly than in his manner of portraying another.

But I am a Southerner, and it is our prerogative, being us, to remember things as well damn well please.