Quotes About Interpretation

I think of myself as an interpretative singer and a songwriter.

And I can say this, most of the people who have recorded my songs are songwriters themselves.

I'm probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or poets.

I used to get these reviews in American newspapers saying that they didn't understand what my lyrics were about. I saw that as a compliment. That's exactly what English songwriters should be doing!

The good thing about songwriting is you don't have to delineate between what's true and what's fiction; records aren't put on the shelf that way. Books are, movies are, but records aren't.

That's my favorite part about songwriting, the way you write a song, and someone else might hear it a different way.

I thought my singing and songwriting were good, but nothing different. Then you're presented with this picture image that contradicts the impression you get from listening to the record.

I think that's always the hope - I mean, I can't speak for others, but I think other artists, no matter what type of medium they are using - whether it be from painting to acting to dancing, songwriting, or anything like that - I believe the desire is to get to the truth, and I think it's really hard to tell the truth.

As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scene.

In rating ease of description as very important, we are essentially asserting a belief in quantitative knowledge - a belief that most of the key questions in our world sooner or later demand answers to 'by how much?' rather than merely to 'in which direction?'

When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it has missed the point.

I think Hong Kong's ballet audience is very sophisticated in the sense that they are able to find the beauty in good performances.

The food being presented at the most expensive restaurants, by the most sophisticated chefs, was not always recognizable as food to the diner - it required a leap of faith, and I felt curious about that phenomenon.

It's not about the script: it's about who the director is and who the other people in the cast are. Because you can look at a great script and execute it in a very sophomoric way, and you can look at an OK script, and you can execute it in a very sophisticated way and come out with something really good.

I never know what I'm going to get. A 'Sopranos' fan is very different from a 'Big Lebowski' fan.

When someone is looking down, they're saying no. When they're looking up, they're looking to their brain for memory. When they look to the left, they're looking for a lie or something they memorized. When they look to the right, they're feeling sorry - they don't want to answer.

Fantasy is sort of a blank slate that everybody can project their own culture onto. Everybody can read it in their own way.

When you make a painting, even abstract, there is always a sort of necessary filling-in.

As a singer, you have to bring the soul to the song.

Everybody's going to approach a character differently, depending upon what they bring to it on their own intellectual level or their feelings from their heart and soul.

The soul is so far from being a monad that we have not only to interpret other souls to ourself but to interpret ourself to ourself.

People say that I could sing the phone book and make it sound good.

You could make any song sound creepy if you wanted. It's all about the inflection.

My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.