I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality…

Science fiction is a weird category, because it's the only area of fiction I can think of where the story is not of primary…

— Donald E. Westlake

Allegories are, in the realm of thought, what ruins are in the realm of things.

— Walter Benjamin

A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory.

— George MacDonald

“However, as a guarantee of its renewed youth, the symbolical phoenix never reappeared before the eyes of the world without having consumed solemnly the…

— Éliphas Lévi

The fumes of the most disordered imaginations were recorded in their religious code, as special communications of the Deity; and as it could not…

— Thomas Jefferson

By a symbol I do not mean an allegory or a sign, but an image that describes in the best possible way the dimly…

— Carl Jung

I don't feel I have to struggle against allegory. I let the readers do the interpreting.

— Lydia Davis

“Hence all original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and true”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely, without putting…

— Thomas Mann

“The Durhannians' countenance lifted as is the way of Hope. There was a village elder whose eyes flickered with the light of Understanding. We…

— Laurie Green Westlake

“This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be…

— Susan Sontag

“On this material plane, each living being is like a street lantern lamp with a dirty lampshade. The inside flame burns evenly and is…

— Vera Nazarian

Not taking the Bible (or other texts based on 'revealed truths') literally leaves it up to the reader to cherry-pick elements for belief. There…

— Jeffrey Tayler

We each create a story - a narritive, a picture, an allegory, a model - for what's going on in the universe. And then…

— Douglas Rushkoff

A symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence, a transparent lamp about a spiritual flame; while allegory is one of…

— William Butler Yeats