Quotes About Interpretation

How soon before there are ancient texts they feel they have to obey but have forgotten how to interpret?

No reply is in itself a reply.

The things I believe can't all be true, though one of them must be. But I believe all of them, all three versions of Luke, at once and the same time. This contradictory way of believing seems to me, right now, the only way I can believe anything. Whatever the truth is, I will be ready for it.

It's French, he said. From m'aidez. Help me.

They put the picture in the window when they have something, take it away when they don't. Sign language.

It was true she had never specifically forbidden us to do anything - that would be too crude a violation of her law of nuance - but this only makes me feel I am actually forbidden to do everything.

It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described

there's often more in silences than in what is actually said – in the lips pressed together, the head turned away, the quick sideways glance. The shoulders drawn up as if carrying a heavy weight.

Guess it's the climate change," says Sam. That's what people say, the way they used to say, We've angered God.

Art is what you can get away with, said somebody or other, which makes it sound like shoplifting or some other minor crime. And maybe that's all it ever was, or is: a kind of stealing. A hijacking of the visual.

All this is pure speculation. I don't really know what men used to say. I had only their words for it.

It's impossible to say something exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, because what you say can never be exact, you will always leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could be this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.

No romance, he says. Okay? That would have meant something else, once. Once it would have meant: no strings. Now it means: no heroics. It means: don't risk yourself for me, if it should come to that.

know what you mean, we'd say. Or, a quaint expression you sometimes hear, still, from older people: I hear where you're coming from, as if the voice itself were a traveler, arriving from a distant place. Which it would be, which it is.

I try to remember if the past was exactly like this. I'm not sure, now. I know it contained these things, but somehow the mix is different. A movie about the past is not the same as the past.

Why should I need to explain you

On my Tree of Paradise, I intend to put a border of snakes entwined; they will look like vines or just a cable pattern to others, as I will make the eyes very small, but they will be snakes to me; as without a snake or two, the main part of the story would be missing.

Su madre aprovechó para decir que el problema con las personas de otra cultura era que nunca sabía uno si estaban locos o no, porque sus pautas de comportamiento eran muy distintas. Los agentes se mostraron de acuerdo con ella, con deferencia pero también con condescendencia, como si fuese una completa imbécil a quien había que complacer.

Context is all; or is it ripeness? One or the other.

God cannot be held to the narrowness of literal and materialistic interpretations, nor measured by Human measurements, for His days are eons, and a thousand ages of our time are like an evening to Him.

Who is this Fuck?" says Abraham Lincoln. "Why is he talking to this Fuck? That is not the name of anyone here.

He was entitled to his own versions, his own conjurings. as I am. I may have served his ends, but he served mine as well.

Roz is telling a story. That's what they will do, increasingly in their lives: tell stories. Tonight their stories will be about Zenia.

Words," he said, looking in my direction finally but with his eyes strangely unfocussed, as though he was really looking at a point several inches beneath my skin, "are beginning to lose their meanings.