Quotes About Interpretation

She did not want to read this book from start to finish, or rather, she thought perhaps it did not want her to. Instead she practiced the art of bibliomancy, trusting the book to show her what it wanted her to know.

Anything is a poem if you say it often enough.

A story is a map of the world. A gloriously colored and wonderful map, the sort one often sees framed and hanging on the wall in a study full of plush chairs and stained-glass lamps: painstakingly lettered, researched down to the last pebble and participle, drawn with dash and flair, with cloud-goddesses in the corners and giant squid squirming up out of the sea...[T]here are more maps in the world than anyone can count. Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center.

He tried to reconstruct the story in his mind, but it kept getting confused, bleeding into itself like watercolors.

It's only that the answers in most stories are boring because they are supplied by the real world rather than, well, something better. Something more stimulating. Sit down with the Greeks and the Romans, and the boring answers get more interesting. Seasons because a girl and a crocus. Death because a girl and an apple. The moon because a girl keeps driving her daft chariot into the sea. It's all down to girls, one way or another.

In a very real way, television is the new mythos. It defines the world, reinterprets it. The seasons do not change because Persephone goes underground. They change because new episodes air, because sweeps week demands conflagrations and ritual deaths. The television series rises slowly, arcs, descends into hiatus, and rises again with the bright, burning autumn.

Is there anything which does not do as you say?" the girl asked archly. He blushed. "You know my cry. I do not know yours," he mumbled, not meeting her gaze.

A tale may have exactly three beginnings: one for the audience, one for the artist, and one for the poor bastard who has to live in it." A

In my experience, folk find it nigh on impossible to call a thing what it is. It

Coyness is what makes it art, darling. Otherwise … otherwise it's nothing but a funeral.

Oh, please, do try to explain it to them. We'll be here for ninety years, and at the end of it they'll be quite certain you've told them that Mohammed is a turtle with an excellent singing voice. May you have better luck than I!

If you let things start claiming to mean other things, there's no limit on how many things they can mean!

Don't trust metaphors," the wombat snorted. "If you let things start claiming to mean other things, there's no limit on how many things they can mean!

Some theologians argue that one kind of grace is better than another, and that some people think they're experiencing "divine" grace when it's actually just "common." To me, that's like bickering about what color God's eyes are. (They're hazel, in case you were wondering.)

Copyediting is helping the words survive the misconceptions of their authors.

Displaying positive social emotions, especially smiling and laughter, are consistently interpreted as trustworthy, familiar, and attractive (Nelson, & Jeste, 2008; Niedenthal,

If one keeps one's eyes open, it is possible to see things in many different ways.

The problem with silence is that it can't speak up and say why it's silent. And so silence collects, becomes amplified, takes on a life outside our intentions, in that silence can get misread as indifference, or avoidance,

She talked about how the circuits of a poetic form are not charged on what you say, but what you hold back. The poem is a net that catches the stutters, the hesitations, rather

When you're on your own, you look for signs. Sometimes you make them up, sometimes they're actually there, but most of the time you can't tell the difference from the two.

Australians say 'pissed off.' Pissed means drunk. Piss is alcohol. To take the piss--that means to send someone up, make fun of them.

It has to do with an intuition about the past. By linking research and imagination, sometimes I can think myself into the heads of the people who made the book. I can figure out who they were, or how they worked.

She would have had to keep her headscarf on, never laugh, never smile—if she smiles at a man he will think, 'Ah, she loves me,' " Mohamed explained. As

How easily Caleb had taken the teachings of his youth—the many gods, the animate spirit world—and simply recast them in terms of our teaching.