Interpretation Quotes

It depends on what the meaning of “is” is.

You don't know reality until someone makes a fiction of it. Reality needs the completion of fiction.

Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before.

Postmodernism, the school of 'thought' that proclaimed 'There are no truths, only interpretations' has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for 'conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster.

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.

It is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct-- if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

The law is sawdust that had already been chewed by a thousand mouths.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

I can explain this to you, but I cannot comprehend it for you.

If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

No one really understands quantum mechanics.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books.

It's not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean.

When I say 'Crush your enemy', I don't literally mean it.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.

That none be permitted to preach, or interpret the Scriptures, unless he be a priest, or deacon at the least, admitted thereunto according to the laws of this realm

Because, as we know, almost anything can be read into any book if you are determined enough. This will be especially impressed on anyone who has written fantastic fiction. He will find reviewers, both favourable and hostile, reading into his stories all manner of allegorical meanings which he never intended. (Some of the allegories thus imposed on my own books have been so ingenious and interesting that I often wish I had thought of them myself.)

All events became omens; I lost the ability to take anything literally.

Whoever defines the word, defines the world.

There are no facts, only interpretations.