Quotes About Interpretation

A lot of what we're doing here deals with perception rather than truth. Many would argue that reality depends more on the former than the latter.

The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong.

The painter should paint not only what he has in front of him, but also what he sees inside himself. If he sees nothing within, then he should stop painting what is in front of him.

As the lives of their characters develop, they end up on paths that writers could not possibly have foreseen—and hence give the impression of agency, even to their authors. William Blake wrote of his works "tho I call them Mine I know they are not Mine," and characterized his process of writing as a kind of dictation, "without Premeditation or even against my Will." Musicians sometimes speak in exactly the same way.

There's plenty of sense in nonsense sometimes, if you wish to look for it.

It's not gray," Clary felt compelled to point out. "It's green." "If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood," said Jace.

There's no need to clarify my finger snap," said Magnus. "The implication was clear in the snap itself.

It's fascinating. You know all these words, and they're all English, but when you string them together into sentences, they just don't make any sense.

But I still don't have knowledge, interpreting the surprises that others don't know about, that will drive a new narrative. You have to work and think and stress and fret to surmise the surprises by first fathoming the pulse.

A timid mind is apt to mistake every scratch for a mortal wound.

strange, the Hebrew noun which means "I am", The English always use to govern damn.

I can recognize any one by the teeth, with whom I have talked. I always watch the lips and mouth: they tell what the tongue and eyes try to conceal. [at the funeral of Percy Bysshe Shelley, according to E.J. Trelawny]

And feeling, in a poet, is the source Of others' feeling; but they are such liars, And take all colours—like the hands of dyers.

People who were raised on The Bible can never tell the difference between a warning and an advertisement.

There is a flip side to every concept which has ever been coined.

There are no inherent mysteries, only intricate misunderstandings.

History is always the interpretation of the present

Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen.

What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency.

Criticism is the art wherewith a critic tries to guess himself into a share of the artist's fame.

Art is the sex of imagination.

Any truth must be in a humanly conceptualized and understandable form if it is to be a truth for us. If it's not a truth for us, how can we make sense of its being a truth at all?

Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

But O the truth, the truth. The many eyes That look on it! The diverse things they see.