Jonathan Culler famous quotes

The meaning of a work is not what the author had in mind at some point, nor is it simply a property of the text or the experience of a reader. Meaning is an inescapable notion because it is not something simple or simply determined. It is simultaneously an experience of a subject and a property of a text. It is both what we understand and what in the text we try to understand.
-- Jonathan Culler

#Simple #Mind #Trying

Meaning is context bound, but context is boundless
-- Jonathan Culler

With its shrewd analysis and its knowledgeable reflections on the state of the arts, as well as a rich array of anecdotes and quotations about patronage, Patronizing the Arts will appeal to a broad audience.
-- Jonathan Culler

#Art #Reflection #Anecdotes

After illuminating the work of Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Louise Bourgeois, Balthus, and other modern artists, Mieke Bal again demonstrates her extraordinary flair for cultural criticism in taking on the work of Doris Salcedo, exploring the philosophical and aesthetic stakes of this committed political art and the relation between beauty, violence, and memory. A tour de force.
-- Jonathan Culler

#Art #Memories #Philosophical

Los Angeles makes the rest of California seem authentic.
-- Jonathan Culler

#California #Los Angeles

Poetry lies at the centre of the literary experience because it is the form that most clearly asserts the specificity of literature.
-- Jonathan Culler

#Art #Lying #Poetry

The poem is a structure of signifiers which absorbs and reconstitutes the signified.
-- Jonathan Culler

#Art #Poetry #Structure

One day people will touch and talk perhaps easily, and loving be natural as breathing and warm as sunlight, and people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted, unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers, unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea, and work will be simple and swift as a seagull flying, and play will be casual and quiet as a seagull settling, and the clocks will stop, and no one will wonder or care or notice, and people will smile without reason, even in winter, even in the rain.

In Chekhov, when people leave, a carriage is taking them away forever. The stakes are so high just for someone to make a simple exit. And now we have all this access to public transportation, automobiles and jets and the Internet; we're so easily distracted, but the world is still designed to destroy you. It just happens quicker and faster now.

The university is our culture's assertion that what is made by the mind has value and can convey values.

Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person's broad mind and narrow waist change places.

Rogue Squadron doesn’t run. Unless we really, really have to." "No, this will be Wraith Squadron’s mission." "We don’t mind running. Even when we don’t have to.

The chief danger of the Church today is that it is trying to get on the same side as the world, instead of turning the world upside down. Our Master expects us to accomplish results, even if they bring opposition and conflict. Anything is better than compromise, apathy, and paralysis.  God give to us an intense cry for the old-time power of the Gospel and the Holy Ghost!

I, personally, am trying to get more and more involved with the gay and lesbian movement, very much so.

Try lighting your house by prayer instead of electricity and see which one works.

Beginning with the first bite, and for every bite after, that try to chew ten times.

Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good.