Quotes About Interpretation

O que quer dizer metalíngua senão tradução? Não se pode falar de uma língua senão em outra língua." Jacques Lacan, L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à mourre

But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth.

There is no 'cat language.' Painful as it is for us to admit, they don't need one!

Oh, mercy. If it catches you in the wrong frame of mind, the King James Bible can make you want to drink poison in no uncertain terms.

A blank space on a form, the missing page, a void, a hole in your knowledge of someone--it's still some real thing . It exists. You don't get to fill it in with whatever you want.

One person's picture postcard is someone else's normal.

we sang in church Tata Nzolo ! Which means Father in Heaven or Father of Fish Bait depending on just how you sing it, and that pretty well summed up my quandry.

Lusa turned to Crys, her eyes shining. That was a luna. Crys shrugged. So? So? So what? You want it should sing, too?

Your own family resemblances are a frustrating code, most easily read by those who know you least.

A story is like a painting, Sóli. It doesn't have to look like what you see out the window.

Maggot calmed me down by explaining Bible stories were a category of superhero comic. Not to be confused with real life.

Killing is a culturally loaded term, for most of us inextricably tied up with some version of a command that begins, "Thou shalt not." Every faith has it. And for all but perhaps the Jainists of India, that command is absolutely conditional. We know it does not refer to mosquitoes.

There are Christians, and there are Christians.

Oh, and the camel. Was it a camel that could pass through the eye of a needle more easily than a rich man? Or a coarse piece of yarn? The Hebrew words are the same, but which one did they mean? If it's a camel, the rich man might as well not even try. But if it's the yarn, he might well succeed with a lot of effort, you see?

I remembered all my tall tales to strangers on buses. I was explaining in my own way; making things up so there would be no discussion of what I was really.

TELL ALL THE TRUTH but tell it slant, says my friend Emily Dickinson.

To tell me it's supposed to stop raining, you came up here?" Lusa asked, looking from one sun-toughened face to the other for some clue. It was always like this, anytime she got wedged into a conversation with her brothers-in-law. This sense of having wandered into a country where they spoke English but all the words meant something different.

a good story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it. It's

Bangala means something precious and dear. But the way he pronounces it, it means the poisonwood tree.

I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. I can understand a wrathful God who'd just as soon dangle us all from a hook. And I can understand a tender, unprejudiced Jesus. But I could never quite feature the two of them living in the same house. You wind up walking on eggshells, never knowing which Tata Nzolo is home at the moment.

But you don't ask questions of an attic. Museums are their own justification.

Maggot calmed me down by explaining Bible stories were a category of superhero comics.

Even a spotted pig looks black at night.

Well, my stars, the thing was like the Bible—look hard enough in its pages, and you'll find what you seek. Love your neighbor, or slay him with the jawbone of an ass.