Quotes About Interpretation

The closest he comes to explaining why he found it gay is to say that like Virginia Woolf, it showed a woman defeating a man. Presumably a straight man could never imagine such a thing.

the testimonies of especially Höss and to some extent Eichmann are confused, contradictory, self-serving, and not credible. -- The Origins of the Final Solution , page 544

You just totally missed the metaphor. I could never love someone who missed the metaphor.

I'll have you know I keep detailed notes. Mistakes sometimes occur in translation.' 'Why do your notes need translating?' 'I write them in Aramaic. It's a three-thousand-year-old language so I have to make up a lot of words.

The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind.

Flaubert was right when he said that our use of language is like a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we need to move the very stars to pity.

The literal mind can never understand the ironic mind.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.

believers fight each other over the correct interpretation and even kill members of their own faiths in battles over doctrine. Civilization has been immensely retarded by such arcane interfaith quarrels and could now be destroyed by their modern versions.

Abd al-Aziz bin Baz, the late grand mufti of Saudi Arabia

A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about.

It does appear, then, that what you find in the landscape of the Old Testament when you 'get there' very much depends on whom you take with you and through whose eyes you view it.

Since the primary manifestation of Yahweh is Israel itself, any misconstruction of Israel entails a misconstruction of Yahweh.

It is vitally important that we pay attention to the narrative framework in which the Old Testament laws are set.

The Anglican position, stated clearly in the service of ordination and elsewhere, is that we should require no beliefs except what we are persuaded can be solidly based on the Scriptures, but we are free to adopt beliefs and customs that seem consistent with the scriptural witness even though they may not be directly stated.

I fink I gots deaf on me willie.

The medium obscured the message.

Ooo ahe-e, I aya oa a, she said in yawnspeak, a language - not unlike Hawaiian - known for its paucity of consonants.

FYI, when I type WTF, you are supposed to read What the Fuck? Same with OMG, and OMFG, which are Oh My God and Oh My Fucking God. Only a completely lame Disney Channel nimnode pronounces the letters.

Why write a song when no one can play the notes or understand the lyrics?

Voilà!" said the artist, in perfect fucking French.

I like big butts," Renoir explained to Toulouse-Lautrec.

That's what I'm saying," said Charlie, who wasn't saying that at all.

He crossed against the light, limping slightly under the weight of the subtext.