Quotes about Interpretation

There's just something creatively fulfilling about watching a movie and writing a song for it because it helps you put on another pair of shoes.

What St. Augustine so aptly says of the mutual relation of the Old and New Testament, "Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet, Vetus in Novo patet,

The duty of the historian is not to make the facts, but to discover them, and then to construct his theory wide enough to give them all comfortable room.

People would much rather argue their own visions and conceptions about a book than engage in a dialogue with the author, because the author could always trump you with, 'I wrote it.'

Art is often defined as a famous masterpiece in a gallery, and we are meant to visit the work and view it to appreciate it. But that is not all there is.

The key thing if you're a writer is to visualize the scene and convey it to the penciller and turn the penciller loose.

The upper lip is like a groom, to wit: The lower lip is like his fiancee. But that which splits in two will surely split into two hundred just as easily. And everything that's been twofold is then accountable, is then no longer moot.

There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call atheists, and those who think they are facts are religious. Which group really gets the message?

It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is. (60).

When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. (111)

T]here is nothing to say about life. It has no meaning. You make meaning. If you want a meaning in your life, find a meaning and bring it into your life, but life won't give you a meaning. Meaning is a concept. It is a notion of an end toward which you are going. The point of Buddhism is This Is It.

Mythology -and therefore civilization- is a poetic, supernormal image, conceived, like all poetry, in depth, but susceptible of interpretation on various levels.