Open to Interpretation Quotes

My poems mean what people take them to mean.

I don't look at things in black and white. There are big gray areas. There's a lot of slippage.

When I write the songs, I don't dictate how people should interpret them.

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 really don't know what exactly all the songs mean. Sometimes other people have meanings and when I hear them I think, 'That's really a better meaning than I thought, and perfectly valid, given the words that exist.' So part of what makes a song really good is that people take in different meanings, and they apply them, and they might be more powerful than the ones I'm thinking.

Early in my career, a critic said that I needed to "explain" the irony in my work, suggesting that I needed to add text next to the images to help people understand what I was trying to say. At first I was dismayed that I wasn't making work with a clear enough message. That's when I realized that that was the exact opposite of what I wanted to do - that I wasn't responsible for a misinterpretation of my work, that there should be some ambiguity to it. They either got it, or they didn't.

I think I prefer for the listener to decide for themselves what stuff means, because I always hate it when I think a song is about a horse, and then it turns out to be about a damn trip to France.

Law in Ukraine is not black and white; it is shades of gray.

This message, in point of obscurity, comes nearer my ideas of a Delphic oracle than any state paper which has come under my inspection. It is so cautiously expressed that every man puts what construction on it he pleases.

I prefer images that are less specific, so there is room for everyone's imagination.

‎Perfect? How can you define a word without concrete meaning?

All art is unstable. Its meaning is not necessarily that implied by the author. There is no authoritative voice. There are only multiple readings.

I think not knowing what to think of your paintings is a good place to be.

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.

Ambiguity lurks in generality, and may thus become an instrument of severity.

Vague expression permits the hearer to imagine whatever suits him and what he already thinks in any case.

In reality art is always for everyone and for no one.

A perfect poem you can't pin down and say, 'This is exactly what it meant to me.' It's not a self-help manual.

I try not to have too specific notions because it messes up the process later on. I leave it very open to interpretation until I start casting. Everything changes a lot when you start casting. I mean everything.