Martin Gore Quotes

It's very important to me that every person takes away their own meaning from a song, and it's why I don't always love spelling out what a song is about for somebody.

I prefer to read into other people's songs what I want to hear in them.

Songs are about whatever you want them to be about. For me it might mean something completely different than what it means to you. So I'd say it's about whatever the listener thinks it's about.

You finish a film not in the editing, but in the conversations that audiences have with themselves - and in that sense, every viewer is making a slightly different film. And that's wonderful.

Somebody's going to hear a song that will key in a nerve or something in their experience that represents their own vision. And the next person is going to see it completely different. So even what it means to me is probably irrelevant. It's totally irrelevant. What matters is what it means to each person listening to it.

I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.

A lot of the songs on '2' are pretty personal, but even if I'm writing about something like that, I still tend to keep it pretty simple and open-ended. I like the idea of people listening to my album and it meaning something to me but maybe meaning something else to them.

It's hard to say what an album is about - because each one is usually about a lot of things to me, but then I hope it also can mean a lot of different things to someone else. That's the beautiful thing about music.

People should be free to take whatever they want from music and I think that over time I realized that different people always find different things in my songs, which is really good.

Once they're on paper, they're gone. I like to do as much with the words, as far as image goes, so that it's really left open for a lot of things, even though I remember a specific impression of something I had at the time. I can't say a song is about this or that; in fact, I wouldn't even want to. I just prefer to have people live it anyway they want. Because it's theirs after that. There's nothing I can do about it anymore

I don't expect everyone to get something deep out of it. Some people can just listen to the music, or get their aggressions out, but I think with any great painting or movie, album or whatever it is, it's better if people can take what they need from it. That they're not forced to get some particular message.

Art is interesting because there can be so many different perspectives in a piece of art. The way I see it may be completely different than the way somebody else sees it. It's interesting to hear what somebody sees in a piece of art compared to somebody else. It could be completely different, and that's interesting to me.

The video forum for me has been a source of great consternation because once you start projecting a look to a song, it robs the listener of their ability to adopt that song and make the lyric their own.

A great poem leaves so much room for everybody to have such a different reaction to it.

With most of the songs and music that I've composed, irrespective of the myriad videos made, I was always careful not to overly define the experience, leaving room for people to internalize things for themselves, making their experience more integral.

I don't actually like explaining the meanings of my songs, because I think people can take away more from it if they use their imagination.

There are websites of 'True Detective' artwork out there now, and it's beautiful. And I don't want to take that away from anybody. I know what it means to me. But I don't want to take away anyone's interpretation of the show.

Every viewer is going to get a different thing. That's the thing about painting, photography, cinema.

The songs are about things that we were thinking and we wrote 'em down, and when you listen to 'em, whatever you think it's about... THAT'S what it's about!

'Twin Peaks' is one of those Rorschach ink blot things, where everybody finds their own favorite thing.

People relate to songs so differently. No matter what it's about in reality, people create their own meaning behind it and connect with it on their own terms.

Everyone reads the same words in a book but has a very clear picture of their own.

Because the beauty of songs, I think, is if you do it right a lot of people can relate to it in their own way and make their own meaning out of things.

I think myself that, rather like books, music is meant to enter into the brain, well via your ears rather than your eyes but, it's - I think a lot more should be left to the imagination.

I don't want to tell what the songs are about for me, because then people can't decide for themselves, which is why I write; it's for you to find your own meaning in. For me it's my story, for someone else it's theirs; if I tell exactly what it means, then it's only my story.