Quotes About Interpretation

Earthenware or pure gold, what goes into them for certain purposes establishes what they are; whatever their fundamental constitution as vessels, when full of shit (for example) they can only be shit pots.108

For a supposedly sacred, infallible text, it reads a lot like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.

But God's Holy Bible is a funny thing. For a supposedly sacred, infallible text, it reads a lot like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.

yes was bound to start a fight. After all these years, Zoe realized it was all in how things

Paul thought of how they'd kept delaying buying plane tickets to visit his parents in Taiwan - in December, which was next month, he knew - as if in tacit understanding that their relationship wouldn't last that long. Paul felt himself trying to interpret the situation, as if there was a problem to be solved, but there didn't seem to be anything, or maybe there was, but he was three or four skill sets away from comprehension, like an amoeba trying to create a personal webpage using CSS.

I know,' said Erin, and described how she'd lately felt depressed in a new and scary way, which Paul also had felt lately and described as a sadness-based fear, immune to tone and interpretation, as if not meant for humans - more visceral than sadness, but unlike fear because it decreased heart rate and impaired the senses, causing everything to seem 'darker.

Andrew saw her next a few months later, from across a street, and she averted her eyes. Did she avert her eyes? Maybe she was being polite when she said ten times and enthusiastically that she was having a lot of fun. Maybe she was being sarcastic. Maybe politeness is the same as sarcasm. Someone should write that book. Against Politeness.

having 'weakly disturbing' images of waffles with pasta on top

To her lover a beautiful woman is a delight; / To a monk she's a distraction; / To a mosquito, a good meal. It makes the point well: how things seem depends on the lens or filter through which we look at them.

We let the schema define our experience.

This would explain how our schemas shape so powerfully the way things seem, almost as though they cast a spell over us.

A pithy Zen aphorism goes like this: To her lover a beautiful woman is a delight; / To a monk she's a distraction; / To a mosquito, a good meal. It makes the point well: how things seem depends on the lens or filter through which we look at them.

Life isn´t about what happens to us. It´s about how we perceive what happens to us.

agents shall be recruited from orphans. They shall be trained in the following techniques: interpretation of signs and marks, palmistry and similar techniques of interpreting body marks, magic and illusions, the duties of the ashramas, the stages of life, and the science of omens and augury. Alternatively, they can be trained in physiology and sociology, the art of men and society.

Reading entails empathy, a sort of "trying on" of being another person for a while.

They were like English teachers who took the fun out of a perfectly good book by breaking it down into themes and sentence structures

Yes means yes and no means no, but what is the meaning of silence?

Don't flip the script on semantics," Celestial said.

This is not an excuse, just an explanation.

Say nothing if you don't understand, stay silent if you do.

Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say one is true and the other is false.

The answer was simple. It was the difference between sympathy and empathy. Carl

She, like many, had always thought that mathematics did not derive its meaning from the universe, but rather imposed some meaning onto the universe.

She, like many, had always thought that mathematics did not derive its meaning from the universe, but rather imposed some meaning onto the universe. Physical