Quotes About Interpretation

Page 33 Oh, they don't miss me, she said. I'm very antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this.

So much depends, of course, on what the individual hears when he gives himself over to the electronic tides breaking on the shore of his Seashell.

Jung speaks of two orders of dream, the personal dream and the archetypal dream, or the dream of mythic dimension.

My definition of mythology is "other people's religion," which suggests that ours must be something else. My definition of religion, then, is "misunderstood mythology"—and the misunderstanding consists in mistaking the symbol for the reference.

MOYERS: But that's not the Christian idea of creation

That's the same idea that comes to us through the German Romantics, as well as out of India. To Goethe's "Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis" ("Everything transitory is but a reference"),5 Nietzsche adds another point: "Alles Unvergängliche—das ist nur ein Gleichnis" ("All things eternal are only references as well").

You must understand that each religion is a kind of software that has its own set of signals and will work.

My task is to make you hear, to make you feel,and, above all, to make you see. That is all, and it is everything.

My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.

To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

He existed for me, and after all it is only through me that he exists for you.

Sólo se escribe la mitad de un libro: de la otra mitad debe ocuparse el lector.

All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions.

One writes only half the book; the other half is with the reader.

Conrad actively sought the reader's collaboration in the production of meaning, telling a friend 'one writes only half the book; the other half is with the reader' (Letters, i, 370).

it is before you—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, 'Come and find out.' This one was almost featureless, as if still in the

An author writes only half the book. The rest is written by readers.

They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything

above—the Council in Europe, you know—mean him to be.' He turned to

that a work of art is very seldom limited to one exclusive meaning and not necessarily tending to a definite conclusion. And this for the reason that the nearer it approaches art, the more it acquires a symbolic character.

Joseph Devlin

Every book ought to be read with the same spirit and in the same manner as it is writ—Fielding's Tom Jones.

Joseph Devlin

no contemporary painting could have any serious standing without a critical theory certifying and explaining it. Twenty-five years from