Quotes About Interpretation

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

We take for granted how our mind puts everything together.

You shouldn't separate the piece from the way it's intended. I always feel like words shouldn't be unraveled from the music. They're all linked so much together.

The long version of the play is actually an easier version to follow. In all of the cut versions the intense speeches are cut too close together for the audience and the actors.

Whatever had he meant by it? And how dare he mean anything!

Ah, these double meanings," she said. "Who invented the English language, I wonder? He did not do a stellar job of it, whoever he was.

Henry noticed the gleam in his eyes . . . she had decided that it was definitely a sign that he was amused. He never showed any other sign.

Eyewitnesses could be the most unreliable. Not only did people lie, but even the truth tellers did not always get it right. Human brains had a way of filling in details that fit their own personal worldviews.

Of course she'd told him she would, but if the man hadn't registered her sarcasm, then he wasn't making full use of his ears.

Maybe poetry is the only way we can get near the truth of God.… And when the metaphors fail, we think it's God who's failed us!

By comparison he could read her like an illustrated children's story.

But Schrödinger said that the cat isn't actually alive or dead unless and until the man outside opens the box to see that the cat is alive or dead." Nico thought that over. "You could listen to hear if it's purring." Frans

If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or (c) recognize God?

If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.

one person's idea of live-and-let-live is another person's definition of betrayal

No writer can impose his own standards onto any other, nor claim to speak for the whole genre.

The goal of a voice is to speak not with objective authority but with subjective curiosity.

Pollock once paid a fortune for a Picasso drawing, then erased it in order to see how it was made.

Others can't stand to revise; instead they decide they're avant-garde, so everybody who doesn't like their work is unenlightened. (Note: being avant-garde is now... well, garde.)

Weaved a different story in my head Painted it like glitter in the swamp

Poems arrive ready to begin. Poets are only the transportation.

Poems must, of course, be written in emotional freedom. Moreover, poems are not language but the content of the language.

On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?

As a carpenter can make a gibbet as well as an altar, a writer can describe the world as trivial or exquisite, as material or as idea, as senseless or as purposeful. Words are wood.