Quotes about Interpretation

It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described

there's often more in silences than in what is actually said — in the lips pressed together, the head turned away, the quick sideways glance. The shoulders drawn up as if carrying a heavy weight.

know what you mean, we'd say. Or, a quaint expression you sometimes hear, still, from older people: I hear where you're coming from, as if the voice itself were a traveler, arriving from a distant place. Which it would be, which it is.

God cannot be held to the narrowness of literal and materialistic interpretations, nor measured by Human measurements, for His days are eons, and a thousand ages of our time are like an evening to Him.

I collected enough fragments of the past to make a reconstruction of it, which must have borne as much relation to the real thing as a mosaic portrait would to the original.

Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.

Every sound is by definition a stop, which is how we can hear it.

No one has a transparent view of the world. In fact, we all carry around a personal worldview—the biases and experiences and expectations that color the way we perceive the world.

I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.

There are three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is the most important of all to reach the heart of the reader.

It's not the events that shape my life that determine how I feel and act, but, rather, it's the way I interpret and evaluate my life experiences.

A Man's life of any worth is a continual allegory—and very few eyes can see the Mystery of his life—a life like the scriptures, figurative…. Lord Byron cuts a figure, but he is not figurative—Shakespeare led a life of Allegory: his works are the comments on it.