Quotes About Interpretation

we respond immediately to language that seems to be experience, rather than language that seems to describe experience from a distance

But Bruce pushed her back ever so slightly. "In dancing, at least, the guy still takes the lead." His meaning wasn't lost on Jessica. She'd have to be less aggressive if she wanted to keep him interested. "Then I'll follow wherever you lead," she said with uncharacteristic submissiveness.

she takes me so seriously, much too seriously, and then thinks about her queer little sister for a long time afterwards, looks searchingly at me, at every word I say, and keeps on thinking: 'Is this just a joke or does she really mean it?

Books are not cake—you and I can devour the same book, and there it remains for us and others to devour all over again.

The most important things, I told them, were observation and consciousness. Keep your eyes open, see clearly, think about what you see, ask yourself what it means.

Teaching students to value literary masterpieces is our best hope of awakening them to the infinite capacities and complexities of human experience, of helping them acknowledge and accept complexity and ambiguity, and of making them love and respect the language that allows us to smuggle out, and send one another, our urgent, eloquent dispatches from the prison of self.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

When no obvious practical purpose for a possible structure presents itself, archaeologists tend to reach for their explanation of last resort, namely 'ritual', or religion.

I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.

Film is one if three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.

Perhaps if we were consciously able to use our bodies as fluently and expressively as we use language, we would find the physical reaction to each successful picture to be as particular and unique as our verbal formulations.

The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.

For them, 'mektub al mellah', as the Fremen say. The thing was written with salt, Irulan translated.

The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable—slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.

Can you remember your first taste of spice?" "It tasted like cinnamon." "But never twice the same," he said. "It's like life—it presents a different face each time you take it. Some hold that the spice produces a learned-flavor reaction. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable—slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized.

If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced. – The Open-Ended Proof from the Panoplia Prophetica Leto's

Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They re-create the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well.

Ima trava okolo! I korenja okolo!" Jessica translated silently: "These are ashes! And these are roots!

It's a subtle and powerful thing, prescience. The future becomes now. To be sighted in the land of the blind carries its own perils. If you try to interpret what you see for the blind, you tend to forget that the blind possess an inherent movement conditioned by their blindness. They are like a monstrous machine moving along its own path. They have their own momentum, their own fixations. I fear the blind, Stil. I fear them. They can so easily crush anything in their path.

If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.

Ali u istini je uvijek sadržana dvozna?nost rije?i kojima se ona izražava.

Za razumijevanje su potrebne rije?i. No neke stvari se ne mogu svesti na rije?i. A neke druge stvari se mogu doživjeti samo bez rije?i.

Bila je to stvar vjere. Stvari su bile takve, jer ih je vjernik odabrao takvima vidjeti.

Muad'Dib gave us a particular kind of knowledge about prophetic insight, about the behaviour which surrounds such insight and its influence upon events whcih are seen to be on line. (That is, events which are set to occur in a related system which the prophet reveals and interprets.) As has been noted elsewhere, such insight operates as a peculiar trap for the prophet himself. He can become the victim of what he knows — which is a relatively common human failing.