Quotes About Interpretation

Yeah well, as film critic Mitchell Prettyplace puts it in his definitive 18-volume study of King Kong, you know, he DID love her, folks.

In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don't.

Today, poverty in America means whatever government statisticians in Washington say it means.

Moreover, even in the absence of accumulating personal experience, it was difficult to believe that soaring murder statistics reflected simply better record keeping, since it had always been hard to ignore a dead body.

The President is a phrase-maker par excellence. He admires trite sayings and revels in formulating them. But when he comes to their practical application he is so vague that their worth may well be doubted. He apparently never thought out in advance where they would lead or how they would he interpreted by others.

The English language is damned difficult, but it's also damned rich, and so clear and bright that you can search out the darkest places with it.

When a child carries unspoken rules into adulthood, he or she may try to determine what others are thinking based on their behavior rather than their words, and because behavior can be based on a variety of motivations, this can cause blocks in communication.

You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.

Some of his extreme positions, such as the idea that homosexuals, blasphemers, adulterers, incorrigible teenagers, and practitioners of "witchcraft" are all worthy of the death penalty, have been loudly repudiated by many conservative religious leaders.

The books he read were "humanistic garbage," devoid of wisdom. The ancient classics were, as he later said, "classics of depravity. Classics of degenerate cultures. What they offer at their best is evil.

And I learned all those many years ago to stop listening to what people said, and listen instead to what they mean. Some people speak with honey and intend to serve us poison. You, my lord, speak with thorns but yearn for cake.

I wasn't certain Sebastian's teasing was the same. It felt different somehow. Sera clarified, "That's the way men are." Jane

But the overwhelming number of mothers who think they have too little milk have babies who are taking plenty of milk and are gaining weight well. These mothers have based their conclusions on misinformation or a misinterpretation of their babies' behavior.

It's poetry's job, isn't it, to keep making sense of the world in language, to keep the negotiation going? We can't relinquish that.

History is not what happened but what is written down

History is not what happened. History is what was written down.

Tobacco, banjo playing, and dominoes do not figure in the Decalogue as recorded in the Book of Exodus. But particularly in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, Christians have been adept, and remarkably inventive, at interpreting God's commandments to cover just about anything they don't approve of. The effect, of course, is to make the surpassingly large God of the scriptures into a petty Cosmic Patrolman.

Faith simply is, and what the religious traditions of the world do is to give us guidance as to how to interpret our own experience in the light of what our ancestors have made of it over the centuries.

He was uncannily skilled at dissecting hidden meaning behind every interaction.

Turner watercolour

One creature's truth is another's lie. (Scroom of Strix Struma)

the first things to consider when viewing a painting are the title and subject matter.

Everytime you read, you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies.

Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. - Paulo Coelho When