Jacques Lacan Quotes

Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.

We often find far more power in a symbol than in something that is an an actuality.

I think everybody is allowed, especially when they're telling a story, as long as it's not based on somebody's real life, you're allowed a certain liberty.

Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food wonderfully as a metaphor for sensuality.

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.

When you're telling stories, you are actually trying to illuminate some portion of the truth in an artful way. The story may immediately seem to be a lie, but it's like an impressionistic painting - you see the light and the color better than you would with a photo-realistic piece.

Everyone knows that metaphors are important, yet we have no idea why.

When you allegorize, you're gonna get everybody saved somehow.

The thing about metaphors is that, if you give them away, you give away the mystery.

Word - that invisible dagger.

To put down an ideogram of a table so that people will recognize it as a table is not the work of a painter, but to sense it for a moment as a magic carpet with a leg hanging down at each corner is the beginning of a painter's imagination.

An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.

What novels do that biographies don't is get at truths by penetrating the facts, by going deeper to what's underneath fact, through invention.

Everything for me becomes allegory.

I don't like allegory.

The dog, the rabbit and the hoop all feature in the painting, and take the place of the orrery.

Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.

My writing is not just all facts and voices. I strive to create a text that works as a sign, pointing out undercurrents that lie beneath the facts.

In my mind, there's usually a fairly definitive kind of narrative when I write. But I don't want to enforce that on other people. I think that's why I like using metaphor so much.

I hope readers will think that 'The Thing About Life' is beautifully patterned, a tapestry.

Have you considered that the Bible, like all religious doctrine, may be allegorical and symbolic, to direct us toward one holy entity of love, as opposed to a simplistic litiginous text to direct the behavior of human beings?

we must not blame our poor symbols if they take forms that seem trivial to us, or absurd, ... however paltry they may be; the nature of our life alone has determined their forms.

And what is the very essence of poetry if it is not this 'metaphorical language'-this marking of the before unapprehended relations of things?

Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory - the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have out paper allegories but ill comprehended.

Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.