Joanne Harris Quotes

There is a profound difference between information and meaning.

I think it's important for people to always understand what is the context is in what is being said, because that obviously determines what folks are talking about.

The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance.

But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and no truth to me, unless I know the meaning o' the words.

No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.

I'm usually one of these guys analyzing what does happen and putting it in focus and context.

Context is to data what water is to a dolphin

The writer is the midwife of understanding.

The Bible was written two thousand years ago. The world is a different place now. Stories that had meaning then are meaningless now. Beliefs that might have been valid then are invalid now. Those books should be looked at in the same way we look at anything of that age with interest with an acknowledgement of the historical importance but they should not be thought of as anything that has any value.

All history is contemporary history.

The eye of understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or levels, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.

It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is.

They did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.

Without context words and actions have no meaning at all

What is not intelligible to me is not necessarily unintelligent

We had the experience, but we missed the meaning.

Explanation changes whatever is explained into something explainable.

If we are ready to tolerate everything as understood, there is nothing left to explain; while if we sourly refuse to take anything, even tentatively, as clear, no explanation can be given.

when driven to the necessity of explaining, I found that I did not myself understand what I meant.

To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.

What counts isn't being able to do a thing, it's seeing what it is. Seeing is the decisive act, and ultimately it places the maker and the viewer on the same level.

Transmitting information is easier than creating understanding.

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question.

Shankara commented on Krishna, on the Upanishads, on the Brahma Sutras. Ramanuja commented on the ancient enlightened people, Vallabha did the same. It has always been so in the East, because much dust gathers as time passes. Now, the Upanishads were written in a totally different world. That man has disappeared, that mind has disappeared, that world no more exists.