Everytime this quote brought up; people on social media start jerking over how the real meaning is in the eye of the beholder. Death of the author and all that. How does HN feel about it?
I would say some songwriters would be more inclined towards that way of songwriting and others would definitely consider themselves storytellers and have a definite meaning for all their lyrics. Telling the difference is not always easy.
The author can always say what he/she intended the story to mean, but that really has no bearing on what any individual reader takes from the story.
I do think there's an interesting discussion to be had about it.
Some people fall in love with things and make their whole life perspective about things like this. I'm sure one could study a rock and learn how to be a great person if they have the mind to do it. On the other hand, people tend to think The Terminator is some kind of prophetic documentary ALA "fiction has some basis in truth" (as though the reality didn't have a better claim to that description.) So I'm wary of anybody who takes a work of fiction too seriously, except in the academic sense of being a good communicator.
Facebook and twitter share the characteristic of getting the worse out of people and capitalizing on it, so this would introduce a bias by giving a megaphone to idiots and people acting like idiots.
To answer your question, no one better that Ray Bradbury can tell what Farenheit 451 is about (and he's been vocal about how people misinterpret it). He knows what he wanted to put in his books. But that does not imply that readers will get it or that in a different context the main interpretation can be different.
His point is valid though, TV turns people watching it into morons, at least the worldwide scientific consensus says so and said so for decades.