Quotes About Interpretation

It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.

When you're with someone, try labeling … is Jack upset? Is Jane excited? … It'll change how you hear what they're saying.

Aristotle is often quoted as saying that a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That's true, but I don't think that's the whole story. After all, a dead cat has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Three hard of hearing guys are at a street corner. The first one says, 'Brrrr, it's windy!' The second one says, 'No, it's Thursday.' The third one says, 'Me too, let's get a drink.

One of the good things about Larkin is that he still has you firmly by the hand as you cross the finishing-line, whereas reading Auden is like doing a parachute-drop: for a while the view is wonderful, but then you end up on your back in the middle of a ploughed field and in the wrong county.

You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.

Memory is so subjective. We all remember in a visceral, emotional way, and so even if we agree on the facts—what was said, what happened where and when—what we take away and store from a moment, what we feel about it, can vary radically.

I do not think consciously of children [when writing] … I do know that children read me more intelligently than adults do.

How you frame a photo says everything about the story you're trying to tell.

What story does the picture tell?" Lieutenant Tanaka had said to Hideki. "That's what I'm always asking myself. Not just what's happening in the photograph I take, but what happened before it was taken, and what will happen afterward. How you frame a photo says everything about the story you're trying to tell.

I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I said.

If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said. -- Speaking to a Senate Committee in 1987, as quoted in the Guardian Weekly, November 4, 2005.

I know you think you understand what you thought I said , but I'm not sure realized that what you heard isn't what I meant

I know you think you understand what you thought I said , but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard isn't what I meant

I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Delight is délice, délit is a misdemeanour' 'Well, it's bloody close...' 'Well, they often are....

One man's constant is another man's variable.

Great books are great in part because of what they ask of their readers: they are not readily encountered, easily assessed.

T. S. Eliot wrote almost a century ago about a phenomenon that he believed to be the product of the nineteenth century: "When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not.

You can change what is written in your horoscope. By acting at your lowest good, you can turn an otherwise very good horoscope into a very challenging life. But by acting by your highest good you can definitely transform an astrological lemon of a chart into terrestrial lemonade. The sugar is consciousness.

We can never fully understand the hearts and minds of people . . . unless we can speak directly to them in their own language so that the implications, not just the words, come through clearly.