Quotes About Interpretation

Snakes, knives, strangers, darkening in the sky— you felt some things with your whole body. What they might mean.

He told me once that being blessed meant being bloodied, and that is true etymologically, in English - but not in Greek or Hebrew. So whatever understanding might be based on that derivation has no scriptural authority behind it. It was unlike him to strain interpretation that way. He did it in order to make an account of himself, I suppose, as most of us do.

Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation.

Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don't. But you listen to them anyway. So, sometimes with art, it is important just to look.

The price the Virgin demanded was purity, and the way the educators of Catholic children have interpreted this for nearly two thousand years is sexual chastity. Impurity, we were taught, follows from many sins, but all are secondary to the principal impulse of the devil in the soul--lust.

Theories about world literature, of which fairy tale is a fundamental part, emphasize the porousness of borders, geographical and inguistic: no frontiercan keep a good story from roaming. It will travel, and travel far, and travel back again in a different guise, a changed mood, and, above all, a new meaning.

The Other Worlds which fairy tales explore open a way for writers and storytellers to speak in Other terms, especially when the native inhabitants of the imaginary places do not belong to an established living faith and therefore do not command belief or repudiation. The tongue can be very free when it is speaking outside the jurisdiction of religion.

Recipes are just descriptions of one person's take on one moment in time. They're not rules.

himself, then according to the sign he should be one of those he does not shave. On the other hand

Why couldn't he get a straight answer from any of them? Because this was Sicily, he thought. Sicilians had a horror of truth.

Dad always said don't take it personally. Dad told you that because it was what you needed to hear. Dad always told me if a bird flies over you and shits on your shoulder, take it personally.

Because of literature we can decipher, at least partially, the hieroglyphic that existence tends to be for the great majority of human beings.

The simple fact is that he didn't write what he saw but what he felt and believed, what those all around him felt and believed. That's how that whole tangled web of false stories and humbug got woven, becoming so intricate that there is now no way to disentangle it.

The real truth is one thing, and the literary truth is another; and there is nothing more difficult than to want both truths to coincide.

Sebab budaya tidaklah sinonim dengan sains, sastra, atau bidang spesialisasi lainnya, namun sebuah cara memandang hal ihwal, sebuah pendekatan yang mampu menangkap apapun yang berkaitan dengan manusia.

Kalau sesuatu bermakna begitu besar buatmu, kau menyelubunginya dengan misteri, tercetus padaku untuk berkata.

ese juego intelectual, desdeñoso y superior, que consiste en reivindicar estéticamente, mediante una noble e inteligente interpretación, lo innoble y lo estúpido, como hicieron, por ejemplo, Hermann Broch con el kitsch

A literatura é como um corpo vivo que se vai transformando segundo o contexto em que habita

Non è colpa della Francia se continuiamo a essere un paio di stranieri, caro. E' colpa nostra. Una vocazione, un destino. Come la nostra professione d'interpreti, un'altra maniera di essere sempre uno straniero, di stare senza stare, di essere ma non essere.

Ese objeto, anodino en la realidad real, transfigurado prodigiosamente por el lenguaje, es la demostración de algo que descubrió Flaubert a los veinticuatro años y que se apresuró a participar a su amigo Le Poittevin: «Pour qu'une chose soit intéressante, il suffit de la regarder longtemps».[53]

Wij dragomans kunnen alleen maar nutteloos zijn, beste jongen,' troostte hij me. 'Maar we doen niemand kwaad met ons werk. In alle andere beroepen kun je de menselijke soort grote schade toebrengen. Denk bijvoorbeeld maar eens aan advocaten en artsen, om van architecten of politici nog maar te zwijgen.

Robbe-Grillet dice: «No, la novela no tiene que educar políticamente a nadie; la novela es fundamentalmente un arte».

Reading ancient myths and fairy tales can be very helpful because these stories came spontaneously from people who had not studied psychology. The stories came straight out of their unconscious and, therefore, show us how the unconscious works unimpeded by conscious intervention. The images are clear and stark. For those of us who are interested in why we do what we do when we want to do the opposite, the stories are gold mines of information.

People had an illogical, self-serving rationale when it came to interpreting the behavior of others.