Quotes About Interpretation

Dopo tutto, si giudicano gli altri solo in base al proprio cuore: l'avaro vede sempre la gente spinta dall'interesse, il lussurioso dall'ossessione del desiderio.

Her grandfather's books [...] opened before Ada, a world whose colours were so dazzling that reality paled in comparison and faded away. Boris Godunov, Satan, Athalia, King Lear: they all spoke words charged with meaning; every syllable was inexpressively precious

La vita sociale si regge interamente su sfumature.

We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.

I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.

Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'.

But to be understood is not a human right. Even to understand oneself is not a human right.

Good art shows us how difficult it is to be objective by showing us how differently the world looks to an objective vision.

That art gives charm to terrible things is perhaps its glory, perhaps its curse. Art is a doom.

What dangerous machines letters are. Perhaps it is as well that they are going out of fashion. A letter can be endlessly reread and reinterpreted, it stirs imagination and fantasy, it persists, it is red-hot evidence. It was a long time since I had received anything resembling a love letter.

La gente no suele saber aplicar la filosofía. Dudo de que ni siquiera los filósofos sepan hacerlo. —La gente puede usar conceptos morales lo mismo que tú has usado ahora el concepto de la verdad para convencerme. Cualquiera puede hacerlo. —Quizá. Pero creo que la filosofía moral es algo que resulta desesperanzadamente personal. No puede ser comunicado. «Si un león hablase, no podríamos comprenderlo», ha dicho Wittgenstein.

However one must ask not just, is it amusing, is it exciting, but is it a work of art?

So art becomes not communication but mystification.

But what words exactly did he use? People who aren't writers never describe things exactly .

I can decide what to say but not what the words mean which I have said. I can decide what to do but I am not master of the significance of my act.

Words may mislead us (...) since words are often stable while concepts alter (...)

Only art explains, and that cannot itself be explained.

How little perhaps can words convey except in the hands of a genius.

The painter copies this bed from one point of view. He is thus at three removes from reality. He does not understand the bed, he does not measure it, he could not make it.

The painter and the writer are not just copyists or even illusionists, but through some deeper vision of their subject-matter may become privileged truth tellers.

There is also the evident dualism between those who know (the jargon, made of discourse etc.) and those who do not, who are not really using language but being used by it.

What dangerous machines letters are. Perhaps it is as well that they are going out of fashion. A letter can be endlessly reread and reinterpreted, it stirs imagination and fantasy, it persists, it is red-hot evidence.

The activity of translating, which had seemed the plainest thing in the world, turned out to be an act so complex and extraordinary that it was puzzling to see how any human being could perform it.

It's only now that I realize that behaviour always has a context and precedents, it's what you do rather than what you are, although we often never recognise that context or understand what these precedents are.