Norman O. Brown Quotes

It's a very complicated issue about when is a fact not a fact in the context of opinions.

Everything for me becomes allegory.

Proust is interested in minutiae because life, as he sees it, is seldom ever about things but about our impression of things, not about facts but about the interpretation of facts, not about one particular feeling but about a confluence of conflicting feelings. Everything is elusive in Proust because nothing is ever certain.

Some people become so expert at reading between the lines they don't read the lines.

you can make mean anything.

I often find that people's reactions to the show say way more about them than they do about the show itself. I think that's because a lot of it happens between the lines.

What you see from here is not what you see from there.

Take it in what sense thou wilt.

Cut the pie any way you like, "meanings" just ain't in the head!

One does not photograph something simply for 'what it is', but 'for what else it is.

People read so much into what I do. It's fascinating to me because some of it's probably there, but I haven't thought of it.

The cards always look different when it's your turn to play them; loaded with subtly different possibilities.

In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever in and of itself.

In the same way, the world is not the sum of all the things that are in it. It is the infinitely complex network of connections among them. As in the meanings of words, things take on meaning only in relationship to each other.

There is nothing in the world that does not speak to us. Everything and everybody reveals its own nature, character and secrets continuously. The more open our inner senses, the more we understand the voice of everything.

Perception is a prism, and reality is like shot silk - depends where the light hits.

The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish; the impressions remain flat and unconnected in the soul. Thus they are easily led by the opinions of others, are content to let their impressions be shuffled and rearranged and evaluated differently.

I'm not looking for images, They just appear and take on an interest. Sometimes you look at a thing and it has no interest and then you see it in a different way and it has another meaning. Or something that was of no use will become useful.

The Text is not a definitive object.

Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.

A portrait isn't a fact but an opinion - an occasion rather than a truth.

Between the subject and the object lies the value.

...if you do not even understand what words say, how can you expect to pass judgement on what words conceal?

Two people can look at the same thing and see it differently.

We just do not see how very specialized the use of "I know" is.