Quotes about Metaphors

The deep places in our lives - places of resistance and embrace - are reached only by stories, by images, metaphors and phrases that line out the world differently, apart from our fear and hurt.

Sports provide us with dangerous metaphors. A sporting contest is a contest: a game of winners and losers.

Of course, we all know that dying, rising again, Christ in me, hidden in God, seated in heaven are metaphors—the use of common language to grasp the uncommon, a reality too deep and thick for conventional vocabulary. Following Jesus is an inside-out transformation so thorough that dying and coming back to life is the only adequate way to put it.

Jesus almost never talked in terms of explaining. He was always using enigmatic stories and difficult metaphors. He was always pulling people into some kind of participation.

The task, and the joy, of writing for me is that I can play with the metaphors that God has placed in the world and present them to others in a way they will accept. My goal is to allow readers their own experience of whatever discovery I have made, so that it feels new to them, but also familiar, in that it is of a piece with their own experience. It is a form of serious play.

Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.

Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.

Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors. All are continually asking, What does this represent? What does it stand for? They are trying to take everything one level deeper. When they get to that level, they will try to go deeper again.

The Bible offers three metaphors that teach us God's view of life: Life is a test, life is a trust, and life is a temporary assignment.

Indeed, "theory" is a poor word to choose when seeking to understand the testimony of the Bible. The Old and New Testaments do not present theories at any time. Instead, we find stories, images, metaphors, symbols, sagas, sermons, songs, letters, poems. It would be hard to find writing that is less theoretical.

I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets.

The book of Revelation is written largely in symbols.