Don McLean Quotes

My writing is not just all facts and voices. I strive to create a text that works as a sign, pointing out undercurrents that lie beneath the facts.

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.

For people who know McQueen, there is always an underlying message. It's usually only the intellectual ones who understand what's going on in what I do.

If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning.

I love having those lyrics that at first make you think it's about one thing, but it's really about something so much more.

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.

Any play that's making a point is less interesting than something that stays with you and suggests something further.

You can't ask me to explain the lyrics because I won't do it.

I like poetry when I don't quite understand why I like it. Poetry isn't just a question of wrapping something up and giving it to someone else to unwrap. It just doesn't work like that.

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.

Something's that written out is okay, but it's not always a clear indication of what a person means.

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

But it's not just a game of finding literary references.

And it's interesting, but I'm always interested in the story behind the story.

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 love that people are still obsessively trying to understand and decode 'The Shining.' People want to find meaning in things that seemingly don't have meaning on the surface.

You go to a poem to get the mystery - and sometimes you go to get more confused.

For 'Gender Studies,' I wrote that story in May and June of 2016. People have said to me, 'Oh, it's a political allegory,' and I think, 'Sure.' The political stuff is definitely there. But that's why I like fiction; there can be lots of different things going on, and it's all intertwined, and you can't separate out what's in what category.

One quality of a good songwriter is to be vague. A vague notion, a vague image, but enough to give the listener the opportunity to make more out of what's being said than is there. That's the great thing about Bob Dylan's songs: We the listeners have made more out of them than he ever intended.

Symbols are important. It depends on how they're used.

I believe that sometimes, when we talk about books, we're talking about the big picture - how they're relevant.

In music, you can use metaphors with ease - if a person doesn't understand the parable, they can still enjoy the melody of the music. If, however, a person reads a book and misses the meaning of its metaphors, this will be extremely disheartening for both the reader as well as the author.

In our hands, even the straightest lyric sounded shady.

It's funny: sometimes with 'Spaced,' people would try and read too much into something I'd done, with the references meaning something more than they do.

Works of art are like a Trojan horse. Under the surface is always some artist's deeply held philosophy on their view of the world. But on the other hand, you do not want to make it feel like medicine. You do not want to make it feel like an afternoon TV special where you're trying to hammer a message into someone's head.