Interpretation Quotes

I would just be constantly writing all these zingers - like, 'Burn. That would really get her.' And I know people are going to obsess over who it's about, because they think they have all my relationships mapped out. But there's a reason there are not any overt call-outs in that song. My intent was not to create some gossip-fest. I wanted people to apply it to a situation where they felt betrayed in their own lives.

What I have to do is utilize as best I can the ideas which objects suggest to me, connect, fuse, and color in my way the shadows they cast within me, illumine them from the inside. And since of necessity my vision is quite different from that of the next man, my painting will interpret things in an entirely different manner even though it makes use of the same elements.

No doubt Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than another thing.... Yet what were history if he did not exaggerate it? How comes it that history never has to wait for facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go on forgetting the facts never so long, he can remember two for every one forgotten. The musty records of history, like the catacombs, contain the perishable remains, but only in the breast of genius are embalmed the souls of heroes.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

Specifically, the part where in the early 19th century America reconstituted the U.S. Marine Corps to battle the Islamic Barbary Pirates, though I don't think that's what Obama meant.

History should be written as philosophy.

The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.

No man is hurt but by himself. ...Literally by how he interprets what happens to him. If he focusses on how it could have been better, he will be hurt. If he focusses on how it could have been worse, he will be happy. The same is true for women too.

I really don't know what exactly all the songs mean. Sometimes other people have meanings and when I hear them I think, 'That's really a better meaning than I thought, and perfectly valid, given the words that exist.' So part of what makes a song really good is that people take in different meanings, and they apply them, and they might be more powerful than the ones I'm thinking.

As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done? A painter has only one language.

'Revolution' . There were two versions of that song but the underground left only picked up on the one that said 'count me out'.

The same set of statistics can produce opposite conclusions at different levels of aggregation.

After all, poets shouldn't be their own interpreters and shouldn't carefully dissect their poems into everyday prose; that would mean the end of being poets. Poets send their creations into the world, it is up to the reader, the aesthetician, and the critic to determine what they wanted to say with their creations.

When I paint a woman in an armchair, the armchair is there to show illness and death-or as a protection.

A picture, to be an interesting picture, must be more than a picture, otherwise it is only a reproduction of an object, and not an object of value in itself.

But men may construe things after their fashion, Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.

The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.

Things do not have meaning. We assign meaning to everything.

The reading of the song is vital. The written word is first always . . . first. Not belittling the music, but it really is a backdrop. To convey the meaning of a song you need to look at the lyric and understand it.

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.

Never create anything, it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life.

No matter how explicit the pledge, people will turn and twist the text to suit their own purpose

There are no facts, only interpretations.

We animate what we can see, and we see only what we animate.

Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history isto be read and written.

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. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

a good reader makes a good book

The lesson intended by an author is hardly ever the lesson the world chooses to learn from his book.

By now even the word socialism has so many meanings and interpretations. The Russians call themselves socialists, the Swedes call themselves. And let's not forget that in Germany there was also a national socialism.

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime.

The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

Those who attempts to explain a picture are on the wrong track most of the time.

I've had people explain to me what one of my poems meant, and I've been surprised that it means that to them. If a person can use a poem of mine to interpret her life or his life, good. I can't control that. Nor would I want to.

Many who know something but not enough about dreams and their meaning...are liable to succumb to the prejudice that the dream actually has a moral purpose, that it warns, rebukes, comforts, foretells the future, etc. If one believes that the unconscious always knows best, one can easily be betrayed into leaving the dreams to take the necessary decisions, and is then disappointed when the dreams become more and more trivial and meaningless...The unconscious functions satisfactorily only when the conscious mind fufills its task to the very limit.

Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface,not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world.

While we are actually subjected to them, the 'moods' and 'spirits' of nature point no morals. Overwhelming gaiety, insupportable grandeur, sombre desolation are flung at you. Make what you can of them, if you must make at all. The only imperative that nature utters is, 'Look. Listen. Attend.

A true masterpiece does not tell everything.

The meaning of poetry has no sureness of direction; is like the sling, it is not under control.

The nearest I can make it out, "Love your Enemies" means, "Hate your Friends"

I have no theory about dreams. I do not know how dreams arise. On the other hand, I know that if we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly – if we take the boat with us and turn it over and over – something almost always comes out of it.

If I paint a hammer and sickle people may think it is a representation of Communism, but for me it is only a hammer and sickle. I just want to reproduce the objects for what they are, not for what they mean.

The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.

The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.

My meaning in saying he is a good man, is to have you understand me that he is sufficient.

"I've always thought there was this underlying thing in Paul's "Get Back." When we were in the studio recording it, every time he sang the line "Get back to where you once belonged," he'd look at Yoko."

Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise for interpreting laws is almost always to corrupt them.

One must be an inventor to read well.

Meanings of all songs come after they are recorded. Someone else has to interpret them

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

To think historically is almost the same thing now as if in all ages history had been made according to theory.

You've often heard me say - perhaps too often - that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Every word we speak is million-faced or convertible to an indefinite number of applications. If it were not so we could read no book. Your remark would only fit your case, not mine.

I saw a sign: "Rest Area 25 Miles". That's pretty big. Some people must be really tired.

Laws should be interpreted in a liberal sense so that their intention may be preserved.

Those trying to explain pictures are as a rule completely mistaken.

If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.

Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme which we cannot escape.

When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.