Quotes About Interpretation

I didn't mind touching the rough bottom of people's good intentions.

However multilingual we may be as readers, we find ourselves faced with a fundamental, inescapable responsibility. We must understand that any book & especially a great one is a complex & highly personal exchange between its writer & its readers. None of us reads precisely the same book, even if the words are identical. Readers too, are part of the ongoing process of translation that begins in the author's mind.

This, after all, is the king who passed the law about putting trousers on cats and dogs, who made too-loud laughter a punishable crime. According to rumor, he was abused by his father, the last king. But that's the story people always tell, isn't it, when they want to explain inexplicable behavior?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Truth lies in the hands of its editor.

I would suggest that value is what people perceive it to be, and nothing more.

no one knew what was going on! It was completely open to interpretation. And his guess was as good as anyone's. My God, probably even better.

That brings me to the real reason for the title: Where does that which happens during reading a book take place? (...) Does not every reader, whether he wants it or not, bring (...) his own experiences and thoughts into the process of reading? (...) Is not every book a mirror in which the reader is reflected, whether he knows it or not? And is not every reader a mirror in which the book is reflected?

Most of the time she could slip into other people, so to speak, and discover what they really meant and who they actually were behind their words. But she couldn't do it with this visitor. No matter how often she tried to understand his thoughts, she always got the feeling that she was falling into empty darkness, as if there weren't even a person there at all.

Jak siÄ™ zastanowisz, to bÄ™dziesz musiaÅ' przyzna?, ?e wszystkie historie Å›wiata skÅ'adajÄ… siÄ™ tylko z dwudziestu szeÅ›ciu liter. Litery sÄ… wci?? te same, tylko zmienia siÄ™ ich zestawienie. Å» liter tworzy siÄ™ sÅ'owa, ze sÅ'ów zdania, ze zdaÅ" rozdziaÅ'y, a z rozdziaÅ'ów historie.

Por cierto, había entre ellas un pequeño monstruo particularmente repugnante: el llamado juzgalibros, que en lenguaje popular recibe también el nombre de sabidillo y quisquilla. Estos espíritus pequeños suelen pasar su vida poniendo reparos a los libros. Todavía no se ha logrado establecer con certeza para qué existen tales criaturas...

Mathematics becomes very odd when you apply it to people. One plus one can add up to so many different sums

There are three kind of history. The first is what really happened and that is forever lost. The second is what most people thought happened, and we can recover that with assiduous effort. The third is what the people in power wanted the future to think happened and that is 90 percent of the history in books.

He said there are three kinds of history. The first is what really happened, and that is lost forever. The second is what most people thought happened, and we can recover that with assiduous effort. The third is what the people in power wanted the future to think happened, and that is 90 percent of the history in books.

It is as if the time has come for us to play 'Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?'  It is important because it is apparent we do not all follow the same Jesus.  Why is that?  I intend to show you that certain philosophical and theological assumptions, structuring principles and interpretive grids, blind us from seeing what is right there in front of our eyes.  Or rather, who is right there. 

lie of scapegoating, this unconsciousness of scapegoating (to have a scapegoat is not to be aware that one has a scapegoat), therefore means that a text that openly mentions scapegoating cannot be a scapegoat text. I have confidence that this will be done and is already being done by interpreters of the Bible who use mimetic theory.

Agatha says that, nowadays, things that people have just written can be almost as valuable as pictures they've painted.

In the final analysis, I learned that there is no such thing as the correct answers; it is only perspective

We need to work hard to fend off our natural tendency to view what happened as having been inevitable. Our minds simply want to explain what happened and close the case, but the world followed but one path among many possible ones. If we do the Rain Dance and it rains, then to the human brain, it looks like the dance caused the rain. In the more rational part of our brain, we know it's not true. Yet we dance on.

Art provides us with clues about how to live our lives more fully...about how creating, collecting, and even just appreciating art can make daily living a masterpiece.

When someone says something, don't ask yourself if it is true. Ask what it might be true of." That

good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said.

Confirmation bias," he'd heard this called. The human mind was just bad at seeing things it did not expect to see, and a bit too eager to see what it expected to see. "Confirmation bias is the most insidious because you don't even realize it is happening," he said. A scout would settle on an opinion about a player and then arrange the evidence to support that opinion. "The

When someone says something, don't ask yourself if it is true. Ask what it might be true of.

The human mind was just bad at seeing things it did not expect to see, and a bit too eager to see what it expected to see.