Quotes About Interpretation

If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.

If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint

I have tried to present my sensations in what is the most congenial and impressive form possible to me.

A thief believes everybody steals.

I can explain it to you, but I can't comprehend it for you.

Explicitly connecting how people describe the natural world in different ways is a top conservation priority.

Continuous interpretation is achieved by trying to control every approach to the public mind in such a manner that the public receives the desired impression, often without being conscious of it. High-spotting, on the other hand, vividly seizes the attention of the public and fixes it upon some detail or aspect which is typical of the entire enterprise.

The historian must have some conceptions of how men who are not historians behave.

I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it.

Ethical philosophers intuit the deontological canons of morality by consulting the emotive centers of their own hypothalamic-limbic system... Only by interpreting the activity of the emotive centers as a biological adaptation can the meaning of the ethical canons be deciphered.

The hitter can never be the judge. Only the receiver of the blow can tell you how hard it was, whether it would kill a man or make a baby just yawn.

All grammars leak.

The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached ... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

It's the hardest addiction of all,' said Patrick. 'Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, that deep-down need to mean two things at once, to be in two places at once, not to be there for the catastrophe of a fixed meaning.

The measure of a work of art is how much art it has in it, not how much 'relevance'. Relevant to whom? Relevant to what? Nothing is more ephemeral than a hot topic.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper. the photographer begins with the finished product

If he [Pound] is not careful he will take to meaning what he says instead of saying what he means.

The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly - to develop strategies of seeing and showing.

My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.

Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection . . .

The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?

The best translations cannot convey to us the strength and exquisite delicacy of thought in its native garb, and he to whom such books are shut flounders about in outer darkness.