Quotes About Interpretation

You think about the beauty and what you want to transmit. If I think about designing, I can't design.

I don't set out to transmit a message. I don't write with a political point of view. There are no religious overtones. Looking back at my books, I can say, 'Oh, yes, it is there.' But it's not in my mind when I write.

The transparency of a metaphor displays the glint of truth. But if a metaphor is taken for a reality, it then becomes dense and masks the truth it is meant to display.

The goal of Bible translation is be transparent to the original text - to see as clearly as possible what the biblical authors actually wrote.

Don't forget there are two sides to performing. Finding the truth, but you also have to be transparent enough for the audience to see it. How many times have you seen a performance and thought: 'Well, it seems to be meaning a great deal to you but it ain't coming across to me?' It is to be shared.

Ture stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.

The great artist sees his objects (and this is true whether they are sad, absurd, repulsive or even evil) in a light of justice and mercy.

I leaped up because I had once told my cellmate that Jesus was a pimp, and that she, Sister Claire, had just confirmed that it was true.

Ništa ne objašnjavaj, kažem sama sebi, ljudi te ionako ne?e razumjeti, bilo zato što su glupi, bolo zato što im nije stalo, naj?eš?e ovo drugo.

If you asked a child riding a broomstick what it was doing, the child would answer, without hesitation: 'I am riding a horse.' For that child, a stick is a horse. It is as if by merely calling something by another name, you are able to transform it into what you want it to be. By usurping God's power, you create an illusion of an instant Paradise. And no one has yet told the infant Eastern Europe that a wooden stick is not a horse.

Brits and Americans have hundreds of different phrases for the same thing. Luckily, it's usually a source of amusement rather than frustration. A flashlight by any other name is still a torch. My personal favourite is 'fairy lights ' which we boringly refer to as 'Christmas lights.'

True prophecy will bring forth things new and old out of the Scriptures of truth and will make them living and powerful to us.

God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods...

My method is to call in support of my statements the evidence of a single witness, the man I am arguing with, and to take his vote alone; the rest of the world are nothing to me; I am not talking to them.

I tell you I can't read a book, but I can read de people.

The more the reader's imagination can be substituted for detail from the writer, the greater the reader's experience will be.

A man's mind is hidden in his writings: criticism brings it to light.

I have this idealistic and maybe naive thought that almost any song can be anything. If you record one song today, it would maybe be exciting and cool. But I could record the same song next week and it would be something completely different.

One of the risks of being quiet is that the other people can fill your silence with their own interpretation: You're bored. You're depressed. You're shy. You're stuck up. You're judgemental. When others can't read us, they write their own story—not always one we choose or that's true to who we are.

One of the risks of being quiet is that the other people can fill your silence with their own interpretation: You're bored. You're depressed. You're shy. You're stuck up. You're judgmental. When others can't read us, they write their own story—not always one we choose or that's true to who we are.

Different people regard rules differently, no matter what those rules happen to be. Mutinous characters like me always resent constraints, even perfectly sensible ones, but there are some who welcome their existence and enforcement because it makes them feel safer. Protected.

When one has a driving preoccupation [...] it colours the way one sees the world.

It's funny that sometimes you can only describe something with perfect accuracy by being wildly inaccurate.

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.