Open-Ended Interpretation Quotes

In order to be as free as I possibly can, in my own imagination, I can't take positions that are closed. Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it, to open doors, sometimes, not even closing the book -- leaving the endings open for reinterpretation, revisitation, a little ambiguity.

I don't write songs about a specific, elusive thing.

You know what I would like to do: make a film with actors standing in empty space so that the spectator would have to imagine the background of the characters.

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!

I'd rather let the fiction speak for itself and I don't want to write fiction that tells people how to feel, and I don't want to be judgmental in the fiction.

Nowadays people don't know how to handle it if all the ends aren't tied up and they're not told what to think in films. And if they're challenged, they think it's something wrong with the film.

The great thing about this thing we call art is that it has no rules.

I've gotten to a point where I don't want lyrics to mean anything.

My films are inquiries. I've chopped down all the signposts, I really resist taking moral positions.

We try to write things that can be interpreted on lots of different levels. There's not a right way or a wrong way... people can adventure a little.

You have to let the viewers come away with their own conclusions. If you dictate what they should think, you've lost it.

I have this idealistic and maybe naive thought that almost any song can be anything. If you record one song today, it would maybe be exciting and cool. But I could record the same song next week and it would be something completely different.

With docs, there's often a very direct communication between the filmmaker and the audience. With narrative movies, we leave it a little bit more open.

It makes sense that whatever the topic is, it's more compelling if you can provide the audience with a range of perspectives, and you can cross disciplines. And you don't have to control what people take out of it.