Quotes About Interpretation

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender to them.

It was not the man's brain that was speaking it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words but it was not speech in true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness like the quacking of a duck.

A story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes.

I believe that on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan

No book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.

Applied to an opponent, it is abuse, applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about.

There is a word in Newspeak,' said Syme, 'I don't know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.

It might very well be that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one accepted without question, was pure fantasy.

El pasado es únicamente lo que digan los testimonios escritos y la memoria humana.

The stuff that was coming out of his mouth consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.

Doubtless any horoscope seems true if it tells that you are highly attractive to the opposite sex and your worst fault is generosity.

She's beautiful," he murmured. "She's a meter across the hips, easily," said Julia. "That is her style of beauty," said Winston.

When these images clash—as in The Fascist octupus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot—it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking.

Most modern literary criticism is literary and nothing else—that is, it concentrates on an author's style and thinks it rather vulgar to notice his subject matter.

The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.

It was like a single equation with two unknowns. It might very well be that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one accepted without question, was pure fantasy.

Mr. Upward italicises "at the present time" because he realises that you cannot, for instance, dismiss Hamlet on the ground that Shakespeare was not a Marxist.

Le creature di fuori gurdavano dal maiale all'uomo dall'uomo al maiale e ancora dal maiale all'uomo, ma già era loro impossibile distinguere fra i due.

It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan.

if you took 1 Corinthians, chapter thirteen, and in every verse wrote 'money' instead of 'charity', the chapter had ten times as much meaning as before.

It is obvious that a person who reads Mein Kampf must be a Fascist.