David Byrne Quotes

I’m not all about money, but, like most musicians, I am about survival.

I'm afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn't fit that will become unnecessary

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

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.

As I define it, rock and roll is dead. The attitude isn't dead, but the music is no longer vital. It doesn't have the same meaning. The attitude, though, is still very much alive - and it still informs other kinds of music.

I don't think I have grand visions that I will never achieve.

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

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

I can't tell one from the other:I find you or you find me?There was a time before we were born If someone asks, this is where I'll be.

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

The wage for most musicians is a modest amount, and that includes me some of the time.

The Heads were the only band on that scene that had a groove.

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.

I still feel like if I can get a song to work with, say, a basic beat, a rhythm, some chord changes, and a melody, a vocal melody - if it works with that, then I feel it's written and there's something there. So I intentionally don't get involved with arranging stuff or fussing over the sounds and the edits and the beats too much, at least not in the beginning, because I feel like then you can fool yourself that you've got something there, when you might not.

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

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.

Technology has altered the way music sounds, how it’s composed and how we experience it. It has also flooded the world with music. The world is awash with (mostly) recorded sounds. We used to have to pay for music or make it ourselves; playing, hearing and experiencing it was exceptional, a rare and special experience. Now hearing it is ubiquitous, and silence is the rarity that we pay for and savor.

Science's job is to map our ignorance.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know and the more you know that you don't know.

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.

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.

When everything is worth money, then money is worth nothing.

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

I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it's a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.

I didn't have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

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.

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 arts don't exist in isolation.

When everything is visible and appears to be dumb, that's when the details take on larger meanings.

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

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

Always be skeptical about simplicity.

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

My personal feeling is that human beings have this incredible capacity for denial.

A lot of people, musically anyway, have realized that they can do it, and there's an audience for it at least in their own country, and often thought a lot of countries have a diaspora that breaks out all over the place, so they have a pretty wide audience.

Facts are simple and facts are straight. Facts are lazy and facts are late. Facts all come with points of view. Facts don't do what I want them to. Facts just twist the truth around. Facts are living turned inside out.

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.

Suburban houses and tin sheds are often the objects of ridicule.

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

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

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

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.

People will do odd things if you give them money.

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 don't care how impossible it seems.

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

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

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.