Quotes About Interpretation

Describir nunca es bastante.

Ah, a literatura!... - exclamou. - Meu amigo, ler não é pensar a sós: ler é dialogar! Porém o diálogo da leitura é um diálogo platónico: o teu interlocutor constitui uma ideia. Contudo não se trata de uma ideia imutável: ao dialogares com ela, modifica-la, torna-la tua, chegas a acreditar na sua existência autónoma...

El buen lector es que tiene casi constantemente la impresión de que no se ha enterado bien.

The existence of language is, in a way, a continual denigration of words.

El símbolo entrega su secreto enorme cuando lo tomamos al pie de la letra y sin alterarlo lo trasportamos al resto de la realidad

Ser artista es no tomar en serio al hombre tan serio que somos cuando no somos artistas.

God Writes only consonants...the reader is the writer.

Juzga a los hombres como los oye juzgar.

I am not writing for this generation but for those yet to come. If this one could read what I have written, it would burn my books, my whole life's work. But the generation that deciphers these characters will be a learned generation; it will understand me and say: "Not everyone slept during the night of our forefathers!

In Mexico we have a word for sushi: bait.

Those who try to understand life, which, by definition, cannot be understood, are those who do not understand poetry, which is, in short, the only thing that can be understood.

To the Nahuas, words were flowers, metaphors that gave birth to thoughts and actions.

Ultimately nature and events are largely what our imaginations make them out to be.

And as much as history serves as a medium for discovering the past, it also is, we confess, a means to invent it.

A common civility to an impertinent fellow, often draws upon one a great many unforeseen troubles; and if one doth not take particular care, will be interpreted by him as an overture of friendship and intimacy.

Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.

Out of Dostoevsky: Kafka. Out of Tolstoy: Margaret Mitchell. (in conversation, explaining his dislike for Tolstoy)

If I've learned one thing in the last few days it is that every question does not need to be answered. A story is not true just because of it's literal veracity. It is the message, what it teaches, that counts.

Though a man hath the best eyes in the world, he cannot see any way but that which he turns them.

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.

All religions are true but none are literal.

Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.

Our reality is influenced by our notions about reality, regardless of the nature of those notions

My task… to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything.