David Bowie Quotes

I probably also wanted to be black at that particular time [ 9 years old] as well.

Let the children use it, let the children lose it, let all the children boogie.

And it's always the same kind of artist, I think, who has more enjoyment being slightly on the outside of things, who doesn't want to be sucked into the tyranny of the mainstream. Because once you get sucked into that, you're dead as an artist.

I think that the history of rock could be recycled in a different way and brought back into focus without the luggage that comes along with it.

It was like treading water all through the '60s, and when 1970 kicked in, I thought "We're here. Right." God, this is exciting. I'm going to go for it now. I really felt it was my time. Then Marc Bolan did it first. That really pissed me off.

I surrounded myself with people who indulged my ego. They treated me as though I was Ziggy Stardust or one of my characters, never realising that David Jones might be behind it.

The character thing really is sort of, for me, personally, rather ancient history.

I'm English. I can't accept happiness that easily. There's got to be a trick in there somewhere.

I hate albums that are really happy. When I am really happy, I don't like to hear happy albums, and when I am really sad I don't wanna hear happy albums... and I tend to gravitate towards the lonely and isolated anyway when I write.

I always had a repulsive sort of need to be something more than human.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle. The rock stars have assimilated all kinds of philosophies, styles, histories, writings, and they throw out what they have gleaned from that.

Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.

I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on.

Elvis was a major hero of mine. I was probably stupid enough to believe that having the same birthday as him actually meant something.

I have to take total control myself. I can't let anybody else do anything, for I find that I can do things better for me. I don't want to get other people playing with what they think that I'm trying to do.

Speak in extremes, it'll save you time.

David Bowie emerged as a rock star in the late '60s. And as Ken Tucker wrote, "In the face of the hippy era's sincerity, intimacy and generosity, Bowie presented irony, distance and self-absorption. His song 'Changes' announced the arrival of a new counterculture," unquote.

[David] Bowie's last album "Blackstar" featured him backed by a jazz quartet.

You would think that a rock star being married to a super-model would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.

I woke up one day and realized I was a closet hetero

I'll place my love beneath the stars.

A career of nearly 40 years, is not very long.

She asked for my love and I gave her a dangerous mind.

Who'll love Aladdin Sane? Battle cries and champagne just in time for sunrise.

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.

I'm regarded quite asexually by a lot of people. And the people that understand me the best are nearer to what I understand about me.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I've got left?

Rather than really have, like a close relationship to anything that's coming out today, people are just, they've got it on as background music. It's kind of the same way the cabdrivers use music; it's very disposable.

To not be modest about it, you'll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I've worked with have done their best work by far with me.

I really believe that Bob Dylan and others have speeded up the changes. Pacifism has found a voice at last.

That's the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God - so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true... Hell, don't pose me that one.

They [people] mistake fashion for style.

The sun machine is coming down, and we're gonna have a party.

I never heard so many kids talk about just doing anything to be famous. I mean, yeah, fame is part of the deal when you're a kid and you think, I wanna go into music, but everybody that I knew was really doing it because of their love for it. I don't see so much of that anymore.

I spent so much time in my bedroom. It really was my entire world. I had books up there, my music up there, my record player. Going from my world upstairs out onto the street, I had to pass through this no-man's-land of the living room, you know, and out the front hall.

I guess Ziggy would have been the perfect vehicle to have done with.

I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

Sits like a man, but smiles like a reptile.

I think the only music I didn't listen to was country and western, and that holds to this day.

I usually don't agree with what I say very much. I'm an awful liar.

If we could be heroes, if just for one day.

The end comes when the infinites arrive.

We see each other [ with Iman Abdulmajid] a lot. I couldn't stand to be separated for months. It became quickly apparent to me that I needed to find a balance between my absolute work obsession and a private life that we could share without my disappearing all the time.

I don't mind trying it out and making sure something seems to work well.

A lot of people that I know are bugged with the idea that they have got to have an audience, or they have got to be liked. I think the more that you fall into that trap it makes your own life harder to come to terms with, because an audience appreciation is only going to be periodic at the best of times.

I'm drawn between the light and dark.

I'm not a natural performer. I don't like performing very much.

I really floated around in the '60s, because I felt comfortable with nothing.