Quotes About Interpretation

Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.

I was once told by someone wise that writing is perilous as you cannot always guarantee your words will be read in the spirit in which they were written.

It's complicated.' 'So's quantitative easing. But I still get that it means printing money.

My sister actually has a "thinking face." It makes people wait before speaking to her. Dad says my thinking face makes it look like I want to go to the loo.

He had this way of talking where you could never quite be sure that he wasn't mocking you.

She'd read somewhere that you only truly saw what someone looked like in the first few minutes of meeting them, that after then it was only an impression, coloured by what you thought of them.

She didn't actually criticize me—she was too genteel even to raise her voice—but the way she blinked slowly at my responses, her little hmm-hmm, as I spoke, told me everything I needed to know.

How easily an innocent remark could be misconstrued when every conversation was loaded with history.

Perhaps Margery detected some of these mental gymnastics,

was once told by someone wise that writing is perilous as you cannot always guarantee your words will be read in the spirit in which they were written.

writing is perilous, as you can't always guarantee your words will be read in the spirit in which they were written.

I was once told by someone wise that writing is perilous, as you can't always guarantee your words will be read in the spirit in which they were written.

She'd read somewhere that you only truly saw what someone looked like in the first few minutes of meeting them, that after then it was only an impression, coloured by what you thought of them. It

See, now you're saying a nice thing and yet somehow it sounds like a bad thing.' 'Not bad,' he said, 'Just...different.

Lily, our last girl, had rather a clever habit of using that pan for two vegetables at once" meant You're making too much mess. "Perhaps you'd like a cup of tea, Will" actually meant I have no idea what to say to you. "I think I've got some paperwork that needs sorting out" meant You're being rude, and I'm going to leave the room.

remarkably bad at understanding other people's motivations, even when they know them terribly well. We write all sorts of inaccurate stories in our heads.

Is everything a story to you?" Harry called after her. "Absolutely!" came Olive's voice. "I'm a librarian, dear!

There was a volume to what was not being said.

Would we find that our history books covered things a little differently than the way they actually happened?

Evangelicals love the Bible. They live their entire lives by it. But they have hugged the Bible so tightly that they have suffocated it.

Listening to Spanish, Italian, or German opera, you, like me, may have no idea what the words of a particular aria mean, but you don't need this knowledge to understand the feeling they convey. You can tell if it's a song of pleasure, jubilation, triumph, or tragedy.

Often, what we think are the facts of the past are in reality simply reflections of what we want to believe about the present.

The more you learn about the law, the more you realize there is no such thing as 'the law'.

I am in every image of this film, I am in every frame of this film.The only thing is: you have to know how to read these images. How? Didn't all those French guys tell you how to read the images? Yes, they told you. So, please, read these images and you'll be able to tell everything about me.