Quotes About Interpretation

Sometiimes when you look at a person all you see is the tangle and you miss the weave

Sometimes, when you look at a person, all you see is the tangle and you miss the weave.

Jews read the books of Moses not just as history but as divine command. The question to which they are an answer is not, 'What happened?' but rather, 'How then shall I live?' And it's only with the exodus that the life of the commands really begins.

Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean. They speak different languages and use different powers of the brain.

The crucial differentiation between humans and all other animals is that we make meanings, and the name we give to collective systems of meanings is culture.

As Shakespeare said, 'The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.'4

Yet there is no verb in biblical Hebrew that means to obey.

As Jews, Christians and Muslims, we have to be prepared to ask the most uncomfortable questions. Does the God of Abraham want his disciples to kill for his sake? Does he demand human sacrifice? Does he rejoice in holy war? Does he want us to hate our enemies and terrorise unbelievers? Have we read our sacred texts correctly? What is God saying to us, here, now? We are not prophets but we are their heirs and we are not bereft of guidance on these fateful issues.

there is a rabbinic principle: "Scripture does not depart from its plain meaning.

Know that prophecy does not help in-depth study of the meanings of the Torah

There's no being wrong in seeing something in art, only being disagreed with.

Literature has drawn a funny perimeter that other art forms haven't.

reminded him of Paul Cézanne's words about seeing in nature the cone, sphere, and cylinder, words that Picasso and Braque, even his old friend Max

Certainly, b?r?' is only ever used of God, but is not restricted to creatio ex nihilo. And '?s?h is sometimes used to mean 'create ex nihilo'.

Is it just me,' Kipps said, 'or does that boy need punching?' 'It's not just you.

George had his faraway look, the one that made him look like a constipated owl.

What could it be? Not a date, surely—the boy's got eyes.

To be fair, since meeting her that morning she'd treated me with careful attention and respect; but since the same could also be said of a gloved scientist holding a blob of plague bacillus on a glass slide, I didn't read too much into it.

All true believers shall break their eggs at the convenient end: and which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion, to be left to every man's conscience.

Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book; convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.

Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine.

When I say I'll murder my baby's mother, maybe I wanted to but I didn't. Anybody who takes it literally is 10 times sicker than I am.

Is negative space the space you don't like, or the space that is not there? And if it's not there how can you tell?

Stories are a different kind of true.