Quotes About Interpretation

She said, 'He knows what I mean. Where did you get those shoes?' He said, 'They're training shoes.' She said, 'Training for what? Are you not fully qualified?' He said, 'If Jesus were alive today, Mrs Whittaker, I think you'd find these were the type of shoes he would be wearing.

as I think Hebbel says, in a good play everyone is right.

What people want to read often seems incongruous. A pair of biker-types taking away Thoughts of the Dalai Lama. People without access to instruments requesting sheet music. Aspiring poets sharing their work and then borrowing horror stories.

He asked whether I had any trouble with my stomach. I hadn't, but the question was alarming...more widespread than I'd imagined...What in fact the doctor was asking was whether I had a delicate stomach.

Ma qualcuno l'avrà pure ragguagliata, Maestà?. Certamente, disse la regina ma ragguagliare non è leggere. Anzi, è l'esatto contrario. Il ragguaglio è succinto, concreto e pertinente. La lettura è disordinata, dispersiva e sempre invitante. Il ragguaglio esaurisce la questione, la lettura la apre.

I wanted to say that the literature may say that, but that literature doesn't.

Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.

No fue el acto lo que te hirió, sino cómo lo interpretaste. Del mismo modo que elegiste una interpretación que te hizo sufrir, también puedes elegir una que te cure. «Puedo elegir cambiar todos los pensamientos que me causan dolor» (L, Lección 284). A

Tú eres responsable de tu acción, pero la otra persona lo es de su interpretación de la misma y de su subsiguiente experiencia.

No response is a response.

Communications can be precise and exacting while still being tragically wrong.

When a diplomat says 'yes' he means 'maybe.' When a diplomat says 'maybe' he means 'no.' But if a diplomat says 'no' he's no diplomat.

I know you think you understand what you thought I said but Im not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

the music expressed life and explained it and left you having to ask again.

When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not.

All books want our attention, but not all of them want the same kind of attention, and good readers know this and make the necessary adjustments.

I wonder about this emptiness," he said. "It would seem not to have any existence independent of our perception of it. An interesting substance. One could think it pleasant or unpleasant, strong or weak, and that would in fact be its reality.

Within the Jewish tradition there are different kinds of biblical commentary: pshat, literal translation; drash, rabbinic explication; remez, symbolic interpretation; and sod, secret or mystical meaning.

I sat on the bed. I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to make it look like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn't. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that isn't the real horror. The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness.

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose.

It's not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn't be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need.

Perhaps this is the purpose of all art, all writing, on the murders, fiction and non-fiction: Simply to participate.

History, unendingly revised and reinterpreted, is seen upon examination as merely a different class of fiction; becomes hazardous if viewed as having any innate truth beyond this. Still, it is a function that we must inhabit. Lacking any territory that is not subjective, we can only live upon the map. All that remains in question is whose map we choose, whether we live within the world's insistent texts or else replace them with a stronger language of our own.

The Shakers also have one golden rule – back to William Morris: Do not make that which is not useful. And so it was their interpretation that all useful things should also be beautiful. God, as architect Mies van der Rohe said, was in the details and, you never know, an angel may come one day and sit on that chair – it had to be worthy of such an event.