169 David Byrne Quotes That Will Make You Think

Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

  

The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror - not the glamour and sophistication the pushers in the tobacco industry try to portray.

  

Cycling can be lonely, but in a good way. It gives you a moment to breathe and think, and get away from what you're working on.

Think

  

Cycling is a joy and faster than many other modes of transport, depending on the time of day. It clears the head.

Time

  

People in Latin America... love America from afar and emulate America in some ways but also hate a lot of things that America does to them.

  

On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the goings-on in one's own town.

  

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

  

I've been in beautiful landscapes where one is tempted to whip out a camera and take a picture. I've learned to resist that.

  

I ride my bike almost every day here in New York. It's getting safer to do so, but I do have to be fairly alert when riding on the streets as opposed to riding on the Hudson River bike path or similar protected lanes.

  

It's not always been a happy marriage. I guess I wanted a quick fix.

  

People use irony as a defense mechanism.

  

You can know or not know how a car runs and still enjoy riding in a car.

  

To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

  

I'd like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

Like

  

I don't like begging money from producers.

Like

  

I resent the implication that I'm less of a musician and a worse person for not appreciating certain works.

  

My favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food.

Time

  

I'm no Lance Armstrong, but I do use a bike to get from place to place in Manhattan, a little bit of Brooklyn.

  

If anything, a lot of electronic music is music that no one listens to at home, hardly. It's really only to be heard when everyone's out enjoying it.

Music

  

Everything's intentional. It's just filling in the dots.

  

Do I wear a helmet? Ugh. I do when I'm riding through a precarious part of town, meaning Midtown traffic. But when I'm riding on secure protected lanes or on the paths that run along the Hudson or through Central Park - no, I don't wear the dreaded helmet then.

  

PowerPoint may not be of any use for you in a presentation, but it may liberate you in another way, an artistic way. Who knows.

  

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

Music

  

That's the thing about pictures: they seduce you.

  

Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.

  

I knew I wanted to have a doll of myself on the cover. I thought, I wanna see myself as a Ken doll.

  

Analysis is like a lobotomy. Who wants to have all their edges shaved off?

Like

  

I certainly agree that putting everything into little genres is counterproductive. You're not going to get too many surprises if you only focus on the stuff that fits inside the box that you know.

  

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

  

I wanted to be a secret agent and an astronaut, preferably at the same time.

Time

  

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

  

The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood - rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky - they all turn out in one day.

  

I found music to be the therapy of choice. I guess it is for a lot of people.

Music

  

Life tends to be an accumulation of a lot of mundane decisions, which often gets ignored.

Life

  

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they're intended to be used for.

  

With music, you often don't have to translate it. It just affects you, and you don't know why.

Music

  

I'm proud of 'Stop Making Sense,' but it's a little bit of an albatross; I can't compete with it, but I can't ignore it either.

  

I've made money, and I've been ripped off. I've had creative freedom, and I've been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

Music

  

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested - I'll kind of throw myself into some area that I don't completely know or understand, that I'm not adept at, so I'm forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There's a good feeling that comes from that.

Like

  

I'm very much into making lists and breaking things apart into categories.

  

I've noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it's various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

Music

  

Most of our lives aren't that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details.

  

Performing is a thing in itself, a distinct skill, different from making recordings. And for those who can do it, it's a way to make a living.

  

That's the one for my tombstone... Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?

  

I love getting out of my comfort zone.

  

The physical sensation of gliding with the wind in your face is exhilarating. That automatic activity of pedalling, when you have to be awake but not think too much, allows you to let subconscious thoughts bubble up, and things seem to just sort themselves out. And the adrenaline wakes you up if you weren't properly alert.

Think

  

All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.

  

The arts don't exist in isolation.

  

Some artists and indie musicians see Spotify fairly positively - as a way of getting noticed, of getting your music out there where folks can hear it risk-free.

Music

  

Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.

  

Yeah, it's pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

  

I have trouble imagining what I could do that's beyond the practicality of what I can do.

  

We don't make music - it makes us.

Music

  

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

Life

  

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.

Music , Think

  

I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously.

  

I subscribe to the myth that an artist's creativity comes from torment. Once that's fixed, what do you draw on?

  

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you're allowed to fail.

  

From what I've heard, Paris did a little bit more prep work as far as making bike lanes and all of that stuff. They really did it properly, which New York is getting to little by little.

  

I always think the everyday is more relevant than anything too grand because we all have to deal with it.

Think

  

In retrospect, I can see I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

Like

  

I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don't censor yourself, you end up with what you're most concerned about, but you haven't filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.

Yourself

  

I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching.

  

I'm not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.

Music , Think

  

Physical contact is a human necessity.

  

When things get so absurd and so stupid and so ridiculous that you just can't bear it, you cannot help but turn everything into a joke.

  

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what's going to happen in my life.

Life

  

You go to a festival, you know you're not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I've made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly.

  

One knew in advance that life in New York would not be easy, but there were cheap rents in cold-water lofts without heat, and the excitement of being here made up for those hardships. I didn't move to New York to make a fortune.

Life

  

I cycled when I was at high school, then reconnected with bikes in New York in the late '70s. It was a good way of getting around the clubs and galleries of the Lower East Side and Soho.

  

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone - a memory.

Experience , Life , Music

  

Frank Lloyd Wright... his things were beautiful but not very functional.

  

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

Like

  

The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world's popular music is a good thing, for the most part.

Music

  

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that's pretty much all you can ask.

Life , Music , Think

  

I don't think people are going to switch over to bikes because it's good for them or because it's politically correct. They're going to do it because it gets them from A to B faster.

Think

  

I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

Like

  

Yeah, anybody can go in with two turntables and a microphone or a home studio sampler and a little cassette deck or whatever and make records in their bedrooms.

  

Well, Marx is having a comeback. I hear him mentioned a lot in terms of the global financial situation and the general sense of injustice out there. A lot of economic experts in America refer to him without actually using the M word, but he's around.

  

As everything becomes digitized, there's the idea that things that can't be digitized become more valuable.

  

I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don't think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me.

Me , Think

  

In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

  

Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so.

Think

  

Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don't buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down.

  

I couldn't take pictures of green rolling hills.

  

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

Never

  

I read the NY Times but I don't trust all of it.

  

I try never to wear my own clothes, I pretend I'm someone else.

Never

  

I've been asking myself: 'Why put together these things - CDs, albums?' The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it's artistically viable. It's not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it's not obvious or even conscious on the artists' part.

Together

  

Probably the reason it's a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you're getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you're going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there's a kind of bundle.

Time , Together

  

So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

Culture , Like , Music , Think

  

It's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, 'Well, yeah,' but you start to think, 'Why not, though?' What makes one more valuable than another?

Like , Think

  

I came to New York to be a fine artist - that was my ambition.

  

Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?

Music , Past

  

There's more good music being made now than ever before.

Music

  

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

Me , Music

  

We live in ugly times.

  

Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.

  

People hear about stuff from their friends or a magazine or a newspaper.

  

I've got nothing to say most of the time.

Time