David Bowie Quotes

The truest form of any form of revolutionary left, whatever you want to call it, was Jack Kerouac, E.E. Cummings, and Allan Ginsberg's period. Excuse me but that was where it was at. The hippies, I'm afraid, don't know what's happening.

When I was 9 years old, I wanted to be the baritone sax player in the Little Richard band.

He says he's a beautician and sells you nutrition, and keeps all your dead hair for making underwear.

Bully for you, chilly for me, got to get a raincheck on pain.

I'm in awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

I got a bad migraine that lasted 3 years, and the pills I took made by fingers disappear.

I turned myself to face me, but I've never caught a glimpse of how the others must see the faker.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

For me a chameleon is something that disguises itself to look as much like its environment as possible. I always thought I did exactly the opposite of that.

Would you carry a razor, in case, just in case of depression?

And I think my spaceship knows which way to go.

Every time I've made a radical change it's helped me feel buoyant as an artist

When I was going through those very fast changes, I think it was terribly important to me that I was seen to be inventive. I think that was the characteristic of my work that I wanted people to see.

I was studying Tibetan Buddhism when I was quite young, again influenced by Kerouac.

Is it Nice in your snowstorm- freezing your brain? Do you think that your face looks the same?

I don't live for the stage. I don't live for an audience.

You should turn around at the end of the day and say I really like that piece of work, or that piece of work sucked. Not, was that popular or wasn't it popular?

Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth.

I'd rather stay here with all the madmen than perish with the sadmen roaming free.

Ironically, style doesn't come even closely related to fashion. It's got nothing to do [with clothes].

Having not really written any generational songs - I think maybe two or three of the songs that I've ever written have any bearing on the age of the listener. My stuff tends to be far more concerned with the spiritual and with subjects like isolation and being miserable.

The name Bowie just appealed to me when I was younger. I was into a kind of heavy philosophy thing when I was 16 years old, and I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that.

Critics I don't understand. They get too intellectual. They're not very well-versed in street talk; it takes them longer to say it. So they have to do it in dictionaries and they take longer to say it.

I don't like people probing into my life, so I reveal as little as possible or lie about it as much as need be so as to give them something to write about.

I believe in Beatles, I believe my little soul has grown.

There's a good television programme called 'Disco 2.' It's quite good but again it's average, average. It's all on a down play. You know we've got this thing in England to be hip is to speak very down - like John Peel. And that just about sums up England. They don't realize when they talk like that, then that is what they represent - absolutely.

It would be my guess that Madonna is not a very happy woman. From my own experience, having gone through persona changes like that, that kind of clawing need to be the center of attention is not a pleasant place to be.

Funk, I don't think I have anything to do with funk. I've never considered myself funky.

By the mid-'80s, it was really apparent to me that I really needed to stop losing myself in my work and in my addictions. What happens is you just wake up one morning and feel absolutely dead. You can't even drag your soul back into your body. You feel you have negated everything that is wonderful about life. When you have fallen that far, it feels like a miracle when you regain your love of life.

Church on time, makes me party.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

I'm rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work it's no longer his.

When I'm stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.

Touring with Iggy Pop was something to do. It was good fun. I got drunk a lot.

To be taken seriously about doing something creative and probably travel a lot. That was my motivation. I knew I was good, I knew I could write. I also knew you could get laid really easily.

Of course, we found out later Syd Barrett had mental problems. But there was something so otherworldly about him. He was hovering, like, six inches above the ground.

I'll ruin everything you are, I'll give you television.

Never bored, so I'll never get old

I'm not at ease with the word "love."

I am a moderately good singer. I am not a great singer but I can interpret a song, which I don't think is quite the same as singing it.

I liked rock music, I kind of moved into that sphere, somehow thinking that somewhere along the line I'd be able to put the two together. And I suppose I very nearly did with the Ziggy character.

No more free steps to heaven.

I've come to the realisation that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing half the time...

Why bother choosing a certain chair? Because that chair says something about you.

Capitalism can be alright, I mean Karl Marx didn't live to see what Roosevelt did with that Depression. He pulled everybody out of that Depression and everybody hated Franklin Roosevelt. He got into office four times. One after the other, with everybody saying, he can't get in again. Everybody voted for Roosevelt four times and he did a hell of a lot.

I could never have done what I did without being involved with Lindsay Kemp's company.

We were terribly excited, and I think we took it on our shoulders that we were creating the 21st century in 1971. That was the idea. And we wanted to just blast everything in the past, rather like the vorticists did at the beginning of the century in the Britain or the dadaists did Europe, you know. It was the same sensibility of everything is rubbish, and all rubbish is wonderful.