Quotes About Interpretation

All I can say is that, for those who may be bent on avoiding the authority of Scripture, no hermeneutic is going to stand in their way.

Under a hermeneutic that is more culturally sensitive than biblically sensitive, meaning and understanding of Scripture can be no more than illusive mirage, incapable of being grasped. For with each change in culture comes a new context, and with each change in context comes a new truth.

There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people, if he's any good.

The first rule of translation: make sure you know at least one of the bloody languages!

One man's shit is anothers factory of Bliss.

I traveled to the page where scripture meets fiction. The paper slept but the night in me woke up. Black letters were now alive and collectible in a material crawl. I could not decipher their intentions anymore. To what end did their shapes come forth? To seduce or speak truth?

Philosophy should only be written as poetry.

Oddly, Leon Stover, in Robert A. Heinlein, one of the best close readers in other ways, comes away with the idea that Heinlein 'defends the traditional ethics of Christian civilisation' (p. 61) which is a hard argument to make given the amount of out-of-wedlock sex in his work and the satirisation of so much Christian practice in Stranger in a Strange Land and Job.

I like photographs which leave something to the imagination.

Life was a blank page written in invisible ink, a tale all told, just waiting to be deciphered.

El libro en manos santas, es objeto santo; pero el libro santo en manos profanas, en profano se convierte.

Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. Itís a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.

Chaque langue voit le monde d'une manière différente.

Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.

Il bello sarebbe meno ingannevole e insidioso se cominciasse a venir considerato bello tutto ciò che dà un'emozione, indipendentemente dai canoni stabiliti.

I don't like the idea of "understanding" a film. I don't believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn't. If you are moved by it, you don't need it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it.

Si me preguntan ustedes por qué digo yo "Mil panderos de cristal herían la madrugada", les diré que los he visto en manos de ángeles y árboles, pero no sabré decir nada más, ni mucho menos explicar su significado. Y está bien que sea así. El hombre se acerca por medio de la poesía con más rapidez al filo donde el filósofo y el matemático vuelven la espalda en silencio.

Con una aguja de hacer calceta, ensartaría yo las lenguas murmuradoras.

Entre los hombres hay algunos que tienen la preciosa facultad de adivinar el alma de las cosas. Se llaman artistas.

Tanto la «intención» del autor como la impresión que el lector recibe son ambas igualmente «subjetivas» en el sentido de que no son vinculantes; más allá de ambas está lo que en la propia secuencia argumentativa del texto hay de vinculante.

No pretendemos en ningún punto demostrar que nuestra lectura de Marx sea la única posible. Tal lectura «única posible» nunca existe con referencia a la obra de un pensador. Lo que sí hay son lecturas imposibles, o, para ser más exactos, presuntas lecturas que no son lecturas. En otras palabras: el conjunto de las lecturas posibles podrá ser «infinito», pero es todo lo contrario de indeterminado.

Descubrí que su belleza era agresiva, aunque su agresividad no fuera contra nada , igual me parecía que era agresiva, que esa era la cualidad de su belleza.

When writers and psychologists believe they've illuminated reality, they are referring to something else: they transform the dark reality into a bright reality and then it's no longer reality with its real color, quality, and condition--instead they set forth a reality of their own heads that has nothing to do with the events spontaneously occurring in the spirit.