Quotes About Interpretation

No matter how good a story is, there is more at stake in the telling.

You wanted people's stories, not them. You cared for the tale, not the teller.

Alain Robbe-Grillet once wrote that the worst thing to happen to the novel was the arrival of psychology. You can assume he meant that now we all expect to understand the motivation behind each character's actions, as if that's possible, as if life works that way. I've read so many recent novels, particularly those published in the Anglo world, that are dull and trite because I'm always supposed to infer causality.

Translation is so important. The new American translations of the Bible sound like a Judith Krantz novel.

Uncle Jihad used to say that what happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of those events affect us. My father and I may have shared numerous experiences, but, as I was constantly finding out, we rarely shared their stories; we din't know how to listen to one another.

When you write about the past, you lie with each letter, with every grapheme, including the goddamn comma.

Let him only see the thorns who has eyes to see the rose.

The singer alone does not make a song, there has to be someone who hears. -Broken Song

YOUR speech is simple, my Master, but not theirs who talk of you.

truth and falsehood mingle in life—and to what God builds, man adds his own decoration.

When we express our thought in words, the medium is not found easily. There must be a process of translation, which is often inexact, and then we fall into error. But

Amongst men of the Cabuliwallah's class, however, it is well known that the words father-in-law's house have a double meaning. It is a euphemism for jail, the place where we are well cared for, at no expense to ourselves. In this sense would the sturdy pedlar take my daughter's question. 'Oh,' he would say, shaking his fist at an invisible policeman, 'I will thrash my father-in-law!

The world speaks to me in pictures, my soul answers in music.

Leemos mal el mundo, y decimos luego que nos engaña.

Nic, co se týká ?lovÄ›ka, není jasné. Slovo, které má ve slovníku jediný význam, dostává v lidském životÄ› význam? sedm - jako když se Ganga rozdÄ›lí, než se vleje do moÃ…â"¢e.

They who from birth have had no other speech than the trembling of their lips learn a language of the eyes, endless in expression, deep as the sea, clear as the heavens, wherein play dawn and sunset, light and shadow.

Mitte üksnes poeesias, vaid ka üldse kogu kunstis peab kunstniku meel saavutama teatud eemalehoidmisastme - ainujuhtimine tuleb anda loojale inimese sees. Kui ainestik saab loomingust võitu on tagajärjeks sündmuse pelk koopia, mitte aga selle peegeldamine läbi kunstniku meele.

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

I've given him more mixed signals than a dyslexic Morse code operator.

And likewise I was beginning to see my own fears and desires manifested outside myself, was beginning to see in other people's lives a commentary on my own.

It was perfectly possible to become the prisoner of an artist's vision, I said. Like love, I said, being understood creates the fear that you will never be understood again.

It was her own capacity for story telling that made her see her own hand in what happened around her.

ellipsis, he'd been told, could literally be translated as 'to hide behind silence'. It's fascinating stuff, he said.

I said that while her story suggested that human lives could be governed by the laws of narrative, and all the notions of retribution and justice that narrative lays claim to, it was in fact merely her interpretation of events that created that illusion.