Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

I think a good poem should have some inscrutable part. You can't quite explain it. The poem can only explain itself to a certain limit and at that point you enter into a little bit of mystery. That for me is the perfect poem: to begin in clarity and to end in mystery.

I think every good song tells a story, as ambiguous and vague as it may be. And if you know what a song is talking about, it can only help your performance.

I think things can have more than one meaning and still connect with people. There's a lot of meaning to the title 'Music For People' and they're all true and they're all accurate.

You have to make decisions - you know what you think. That doesn't mean the audience are aware of your decisions or what you think - the lines you're saying may have ambiguity.

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

It is important to consider that the horror movies should - like modern art - not have a too obvious meaning. When you watch them, it is more important what you feel than what you understand.

I do like how the music can be misunderstood.

What, if not Shakespeare, is open for interpretation?

The haiku lets meaning float; the aphorism pins it down.

Art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear

A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit, their clarity does not help.

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity... but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

For me, the poetry in a work is that which makes visible the invisible.

If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.

The greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out.

It's true that I can write a song and not really be sure what the meaning of it is.

The Sonnets of Shakespeare have the fascination of an autobiography, without its clarity. It is like reading an important document in a cave by the light of matches which keep blowing out.

It all depends what you mean by.

A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

The ambiguity of poetic language answers to the ambiguity of human life as a whole, and therein lies its unique value. All interpretations of poetic language only interpret what the poetry has already interpreted.

Movies work, in my opinion, on the best level when they're more enigmatic, when we don't say it's this or that and where it raises more questions than answers.

I think that if people get my music, then they get what my message is.

Between the demand to be clear,and the temptation to be obscure, impossible to decide which deserves more respect.

The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.