Quotes About Interpretation

Poets sing our human music for us.

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.

and thus they selectively remember parts of their life, focusing on those parts that support their own points of view.

between the conscious lie to fool others and unconscious self-justification to fool ourselves, there's a fascinating gray area patrolled by an unreliable, self-serving historian—memory. Memories are often pruned and shaped with an ego-enhancing bias that blurs the edges of past events, softens culpability, and distorts what really happened.

As Debra and Frank's problems accumulated, each developed an implicit theory of how the other person was wrecking the marriage. (These theories are called "implicit" because people are often unaware that they hold them.)

Every salad you serve is a picture you have painted, a sculpture you have modeled, a drama you have created.

He kept saying weird things to me in Elizabeth English." "Like what?" Christina asked. "Like 'Me thinks I never forget a face,'" Mimi said. "Me thinks that makes no sense," said Grant.

Here, we turn everything into art.

I debate adding kisses, but don't. They might be misconstrued as something more than being friendly.

refused to translate it.33

A book lets you choose how much of the blood you want to see. A book gives you the permission to see the story as you want, as your mind directs.

A photo essay (otherwise known as a fucking slide show)...

I gave her as much as I had, but it's like the difference between a movie and a book: A book lets you choose how much blood you want to see. A book gives you permission to see the story as you want, as your mind directs. You interpret.

that guy came here to confess." "Are you a priest?" "No, I am a church!

Well, like, the screenplay is about the book, so, like, it's kind of the book, only in different form, like the way iced coffee is still coffee even though it's cold.

Insight," he said, "is almost always a rearrangement of fact.

Why are you so sad? You read too much poetry. And you believe the wrong things about poetry. Poetry doesn't come from outer space. Poetry doesn't descend from heaven. Give life a chance. Life is stronger than the interpretation of life.

I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.

We live in America,' he said. 'Everyone who speaks English understands you. How they interpret you is something else.

So it's not what you're given, it's how you take it.

One not only has to read between the lines, one has to fill him in altogether. Because he's not there. To make him important in one's life requires an overactive imagination. Unfortunately, mine never knows when to quit.

You can set up housekeeping on one side of the looking glass or the other--the side that makes big things small or small things big.

Not ugly for someone her age, but what she's doing with those numbers and letters seem unholy.

We are training our minds to see the subtle shapes in the visual world around us. Shade