David Bowie Quotes

Style is about the choices you make to create the aspects of civilization that you wish to uphold.

The public, obviously, they takes things in a very simplest fashion and so they should. That's why we have such wonderful television.

I'm not sure whether it is me changing my mind, or whether I lie a lot.

Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd was the first person in rock I had seen with makeup on. He wore black nail polish and lots of mascara and black eye shadow, and he was so mysterious. It was this androgynous thing I found absolutely fascinating.

I think a lot of that album ["Tonight" ] is still very good . . . the songs, but I think I was indifferent to the arrangements.

Rebel, rebel, you've torn your dress. Rebel, rebel, your face is a mess. Rebel, rebel, how could they know? Hot tramp, I love you so.

Radio in England is nonexistent. It's very bad English use of a media system, typically English use.

It's not the side-effects of the cocaine - I'm thinking that it must be love. It's too late to be grateful, It's too late to be hateful, It's too late to be late again, The European cannon is here.

People will keep the TV on even if a show is on that they hate - because, unfortunately, they've been programmed to do that.

I can't keep my fingers out of any pies.

I don't have stylistic loyalty. That's why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

Comfort comes into your house first as guest, then as a host, then finally as the master.

My work is really the accumulation of these different moods that I've had throughout my life and where they've taken me. I start looking back, and I think, I've actually created a life out of all this, out of these changes of mood. They've pushed me through all these years, and I seem to have a semblance of a life, and if I look very carefully, I can see some thematic design to it. There's some continuity.

I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.

Tony Visconti and I had been wanting to work together again for a few years now. Both of us had fairly large commitments and for a long time we couldn't see a space in which we could get anything together.

[David] Bowie went on to make best-selling music - funk, dance music, electronic music, while also being influenced by cabaret and jazz.

I'll stick with you baby for a thousand years.

I went to a middle-class school, but my background is working class. I got the best of both worlds, I saw both classes, so I have a pretty fair idea of how people live and why they do it.

When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

Everything we look at and choose is some way of expressing how we want to be perceived.

This ain't rock 'n' roll. This is genocide!

I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.

I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir.

I'm not sure that an art career would have any benefit for me; I'm not sure it's what I want. I don't think I want to be a designer-rock artist.

Visions of swastikas in my head, plans for everyone. It's in the Whites of my eyes.

Songwriting as an art is a bit archaic now. Just writing a song is not good enough.

There's just some dysfunctionalism with artists. There are good things and bad things about being an artist, and the good thing is, sometimes you get an inside line on what's really happening. You develop these strange antennae that clue you in to what's really going on.

I guess, people like myself and Roxy Music that had a different agenda about taking up music.

I think the first song I ever wrote ... was called "Can't Help Thinking About Me." That's an illuminating little piece, isn't it?

I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me.

Oooh, fashion, we are the goon squad and were coming to town, beep beep.

I'm bemused by the whole Robbie Williams aspect of British pop. Posh Spice? It all looks like cruise ship entertainment to me.

I don't make changes to confuse anyone. I'm just searching. That's what causes me to change. I'm just searching for myself.

Money goes to money heaven, body goes to body hell.

If it works, it's out of date.

On "Tonight" I think I was torn dreadfully between writing what I wanted to write, but keeping it in a style that would follow up what I had just done. That's where I feel I was untrue to myself as an artist . . . that album and, to a lesser extent, "Never Let Me Down."

In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it's the recording or the performance side.

My son's full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off. It has the same sound and number of syllables as Zowie. And Joe stuck for most of his childhood. Now he has reverted to his real name, Duncan. Haywood was my father's name.

I've made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I've made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I'm proud of what I've done. In fact it's been a good ride.

Someday, I'm gonna write a poem in a letter; Someday, I'm gonna get that faculty together.

You'd like to know me well, but I've got things inside my head that even I can't face.

It makes me sad when I see artists who come alive when they go onstage, because, gee, I really come alive when I'm home.

There was a time in America not long ago when rock 'n' roll was called race music, and white kids who wanted to go see Chuck Berry were completely forbidden.

One day in Berlin ... Eno came running in and said, 'I have heard the sound of the future.' ... he puts on 'I Feel Love', by Donna Summer ... He said, 'This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.' Which was more or less right.

I started playing around with local rock band swith the alto. And then, in a nutshell, somebody fell ill one night, the lead singer of one of the bands, and they knew I could sing, so they asked me if I would stand in. And I quite enjoyed it, actually, I must say, at 14. It was a real trip to have girls wave at you and smile and everything just because you opened your mouth and sang.

I'm very shy. That's probably one of the reasons I got so heavily into drugs.

I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants.

Time may change me, but I can't trace time.