Quotes About Interpretation

To Dick's mind, the flow of information should be channeled with discretion, with an unambiguous interpretation controlled by the people at the top.

A story with a single ending seems to us a bare and diminished thing, like a tree with a single branch; and each ending seems to us an expression of something that is buried deep within the tale and can be brought to light in that way and no other.

People don't really have a relationship with great writing or great production or great art direction or great direction. They just sort of admire it.

For some of us, there are few terms that induce narcosis quicker than "Christian allegory.

Thanks to the redundancy of language, yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls wxth xn "x" (t gts lttl hrdr f y dn't vn kn whr th vwls r)

You ask me what it feels like to have wings. I can only tell you the feeling with words. And words have neither feelings nor wings. Words are leaky vessels into which a cargo of meaning and emotion are placed, and when they leave you and reach the farther shore of another mind a considerable portion of that cargo has been lost at sea. Fallen overboard, gone to rot, consumed by vermin, decayed to a state unlike its original form.

We are disturbed not by events, but by the views which we take of them.' Is that not true, even of the death of loved ones?

there is inevitably something of "us" in the stories we tell about the past. This is the historian's predicament, and it is foolish to think there is some method, however well intentioned, that can extricate us from this predicament. (p. 10, paperback edition)

You're supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you're not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.

Through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time. But you can't get everybody to interpret the result in the same Way. And that's thrilling to know – that everybody will see it differently.

But if oxen (and horses) and lions had hands or could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen of gods like oxen, and they would make the bodies [of their gods] in accordance with the form that each species itself possesses.

It seems to me that to understand these early Greeks, it is better to think of them not as physicists or scientists or even philosophers, but as poets.

I have in mind here poetry in a broader sense: language chosen for aesthetic effect, rather than in an attempt to say clearly what one actually believes to be true.

The pre-Socratic Xenophanes famously commented, "Ethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians gods with gray eyes and red hair," and remarked, "But if oxen (and horses) and lions had hands or could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen of gods like oxen, and they would make the bodies [of their gods] in accordance with the form that each species itself possesses.

If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?

My friend has a baby. I'm recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.

If you can't hear me, it's because I'm in parentheses.

If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?

All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.

Art is sanctioned pornography

The symbolism of what they had done meant nothing in this world, this life, unless we ourselves empowered it with meaning.

This may become a history book, but remember, it is only my history.

Let me explain what I think you are." "Please do. It would interest me greatly.

Every movement, every glance, every low-pitched word is a work of art. Yes, they are performers, too, like me.