Quotes about Interpretation

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.

The domain of Calvinism is indeed far broader than the narrow confessional interpretation would lead us to suppose.

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.... The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully.

Pastors need to know what's going on in the world and what has been going on for 4,000 years. We need a way to read Scripture which is imaginative, interpretive.

I don't think anyone could write about another culture and get it 100 percent accurate.

God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes, but everybody who looks at it sees something different.