Quotes About Interpretation

But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here. In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

But a fact is like a sack which won't stand up when it is empty. In order that it may stand up, one has to put into it the reason and sentiment which have caused it to exist.

I saw then my father for the first time, as I had never seen him before, externalized in his own life, but not as he had been to himself, not as he had felt himself to be, which was something I could never know; but rather, as a being that was wholly strange to me, in that reality which, as I now be held him, I might suppose that others had imposed upon him.

how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself.

Non si può giudicare il mondo d'un artista con un criterio di giudizio attinto altrove che da questo mondo medesimo

Sí! En eso consiste todo», pensaba, «en ese atropello. Cada uno quiere imponer a los otros el mundo que lleva dentro como si fuese el de afuera, y que todos deban verlo a su modo, y que los otros no puedan ser sino como los ve él».

Il était désormais inutile d'avoir une valeur pour soi. Aucune vérité ne subsistait, puisque aucune chose en soi n'était vraie. Chacun la considérait comme telle, à sa manière, pour en peupler son désert, et pour donner une consistance quelconque, jour par jour, à sa vie.

Saben, en cambio, sobre qué se apoya todo? Se lo digo yo. Sobre la presunción —Dios se la conserve siempre— de que la realidad, tal como es para ustedes, debe ser y es igual para todos los demás.

Numbers never lie, after all: they simply tell different stories depending on the math of the tellers.

Uma poesia não é feita de palavras. A poesia já existe. A gente só põe as palavras em volta para ela aparecer.

One man's weakness is another man's mercy.

Freudian Slip: When You Mean One Thing And Say Your Mother.

Mer-people could be read as a colonialist term," explained the biologist.

A work of art is a prophetic loan, drawn on fugitive premises; the artist acts on it, and, presumably, sustains some faith that others will do so too, or at least could.

Allegories are told with a purpose whose possibility is lost Until a potato-eater appears and eats potatoes

Her edition, though, did make two errors, acceptable at that time: as her mother had done before her, she imposed titles on untitled poems and she standardised punctuation, not grasping how vital Dickinson's punctuation may be to the way we read her.

I find that the thoughts spoken between the lines are the most important parts of a poem or story.

As with other paired bracketing devices (such as parentheses, dashes and quotation marks), there is actual mental cruelty involved , incidentally, in opening up a pair of commas and then neglecting to deliver the closing one. The reader hears the first shoe drop and then strains in agony to hear the second. In dramatic terms, it's like putting a gun on the mantelpiece in Act I and then having the heroine drown herself quietly offstage in the bath during the interval. It's just not cricket.

nothing is straightforward in the world of literary taste.

While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation. Whisper it in petrified little-boy tones: dead punctuation is invisible to everyone else - yet we see it all the time .

Birds' heads in profile, mate? You having a laugh?").

Harper: What are FM shoes? Drina: Ahh. These are FM shoes. Harper: And the FM stands for? Drina: Fuck Me.

Lovely was my compliment. Could you not come up with your own? Lord Paen said compliment her, he did not say we had to be creative about it, the second man pointed out with a shrug

It's only music, though she said. Perhaps, Aschemann agreed. For the detective, he thought, nothing is ever only itself.