Quotes About Interpretation

what is the difference between poetry and prose you know the old analogies prose is a house poetry a man in flames running quite fast through it

A translator is someone trying to get in between a body and its shadow.

The poached egg on your plate at breakfast is not dirt. The poached egg on page 202 of the Greek lexicon in the library of the British Museum is dirt.

In fact, neither reader nor writer nor lover achieves such consumation. The words we read and the words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbola never perfectly match. Eros is in between.

The words we read and words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbola never perfectly match. Eros is in between.

The best fiction is often how we interpret our own lives and what we see as our common due. It is created usually as a means of avoiding reality which, if seriously considered, might negate our ability to strive for what might seem impossible.

A novel is written not to be judged, but experienced.

Our view of reality is only a view, not reality itself.

One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.

Scientists do not simply read nature to find truths to apply in the social world. Instead, they use truths taken from our social relationships to structure, read, and interpret the natural

that is a Gouda.

How do you define difficult?" "By your presence." She grinned fully, delighted to feel the tension dissipate. "Now you are just flattering me for no reason." He grunted. "On the contrary," she said, as if his grunt had been a worded response. "It was most flattering." He stared at her. "What? Did you think I wouldn't figure out how to interpret your grunts?

Books allow readers to determine what they wish. People often aren't quite as forgiving if you don't read or see exactly what they wish you to.

A good story is a good story no matter who wrote it.

Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil.

I have yet to find, anyway, that those who urge the broad, philosophical view with respect to the work of others are quite so broad or philosophical when it comes to the correct attribution of their own productions.

Poetry, after all, milks the unconscious.

My business is words. Words are like labels, or coins, or better, like swarming bees. I confess I am only broken by the sources of things; as if words were counted like dead bees in the attic, unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings. I must always forget how one word is able to pick out another, to manner another, until I have got something I might have said... but did not.

I must always forget how one word is able to pick out another, to manner another, until I have got something I might have said … but did not.

They said words they did not mean, and their conversations seemed to follow all kinds of rules—rules that no one has ever explained to Oscar.

Oscar grabbed on to the words and held them.

Wheeler, P., and H. E. Rives. Dome of Many-Coloured Glass. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955.

Annie Barrows

You always look at the things of the spirit with the eyes of the flesh. What you ought to do is to look at the things of the flesh with the eyes of the spirit.