Simon McBurney Quotes

The best public poems aren't necessarily those that go at the subject like a bull at a gate.

What you look for in a picture is a metaphor, something that means something more, that makes you think about things you've seen or thought about.

I'm of the Samuel Goldwyn school of writing: If you need to send a message, call Western Union. Any messages people take away from my books are the ones they see in them.

A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.

I am oblique; I think that has to do with my own nature. I like trying to do things which work on many levels, because I think it is terribly important to give an audience a lot of things they might not get as well as those they will, so that finally the film does take on a texture and is not just simplistic communication.

Maybe 'Doonby' will haunt people for awhile and make them wonder, 'What was that really about?' And that excites me as an artist.

I've always tried to avoid music being direct therapy, and I've always found there's a power when you write something that can have its own interpretation - although I'm not being intentionally evasive.

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.

My pictures are complex and so am I. When I am almost symbolistic in writing, there is a more limiting difference’s of accepting, while I can be even more complex in the photographs and people can usually accept them within the framework of their own limitations or lack of limitations – there is no dictionary meaning… they can look up for the photographic image and allow it to confuse them.

I never think that a film should answer questions for you. I think it should make you ask a lot of questions.

Poetry had far better imply things than preach them directly... in the open pulpit her voice grows hoarse and fails.

The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity.

People ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity. Of course I did. I wanted to make a whole series of complex statements. The lyrics had to do with the state of society at the time.

Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too.

I try not to be overly literal. When I'm writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.

Literature is the question minus the answer.

The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity.

What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.

The thing about metaphors is that, if you give them away, you give away the mystery.

Lyrics need to be good, but they don't need to be obvious right away.

I'm not the type of guy to go so deep with the concept songs, but there's deep thought in everything. Maybe it's not just a repetitive hook telling you what the song is about - you have to use your brain a little bit.

One of the biggest problems in literature is the lack of subtlety.

The performances I enjoy are the ones that are hard to read or ambiguous or left-of-centre because it makes you look closer and that's what humans are like - quite mysterious creatures, hard to pinpoint.

It's really easy to make a movie that five people understand. It's really hard to make something that a lot of people understand and yet is not obvious, still has subtlety and ambiguity, and leaves you with something to do as a viewer.

When people ask what 'American Pie' is about, they're missing the point. The song isn't about the lines themselves - it's about what is between the lines. The song is about what isn't there.