Quotes about Interpretation

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

Many people think… that the Christian commandments (for instance, loving your neighbor as yourself) are purposely made too strict—rather like the clock being put half an hour fast to prevent them getting up much too late in the morning.

External things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them, which you can erase right now

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.

Perhaps he was merely being friendly. Perhaps he saw the look on my face and mistook it for something else. Really what I wanted was the cigarette.

What's the difference between vision and a vision? The former relates to something it's assumed you've seen, the latter to something it's assumed you haven't. Language is not always dependable either.

The way I understand things, the Bible may have been thought out by God, but it was written down by men. And like everything men write down, such as the newspapers, they got the main story right but some of the details wrong.

He was not a monster, to her ... How easy to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.

It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described

there's often more in silences than in what is actually said — in the lips pressed together, the head turned away, the quick sideways glance. The shoulders drawn up as if carrying a heavy weight.