David Byrne Quotes

Singing is a trick to get people to listen to music for longer than they would ordinarily.

When you fall in love, you feel like a missing piece of a puzzle that's been found.

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

When we started, a lot of bands sounded really different from one another.

I've rarely seen video screens used well in a music concert.

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

Punk. . .was more a kind of do-it-yourself, anyone-can-do-it attitude. If you only played two notes on the guitar, you could figure out a way to make a song out of that, and that's what it was all about.

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

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

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?

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

I love getting out of my comfort zone.

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

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

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?

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.

Personally, being somewhat envious of Richard's (Thompson) songwriting and guitar playing, it's somewhat satisfying he's not yet achieved household-name status. It serves him right for being so good.

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

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

The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has a 'meaning'and each of us is unique.

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.

I wave to the double-decker buses from my bike, but the passengers never wave back. Why? Am I not an attraction?

I'm just an advertisement for a version of myself.

There was an op-ed piece in The New York Times by an evolutionary biologist or somebody - which was a curious place for the opinion to come from - and he said that there's no such thing as a completely free, uncensored medium, that people censor themselves all the time, in deference to hurting other people's feelings, or offending other groups, or in their own, not to provoke a fight. And you do self-censor certain things, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. That's just the way human social interaction works.

I am an immigrant with a Green Card and, therefore, I am not eligible to vote in a federal election.

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.

In a certain way, you get some new tools to work with, but I don't know if it ultimately makes the creative process any easier.

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.

Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.

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.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they're going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It's just a given law.

As music becomes less of a thing--a cylinder, a cassette, a disc--and more ephemeral, perhaps we will begin to assign an increasing value to live performances again.

I don't like begging money from producers.

...if photos can reproduce the world more perfectly than any painter, can capture an instant, a look, a gesture, then what makes a painting good anymore? Painting subverts this subversion of its traditional nature by redefining itself - art is idea, not simply skillful execution. So, a work can be crudely made, or even machine made - but it has to be practically and functionally useless.

I really enjoy forgetting. When I first come to a place, I notice all the little details. I notice the way the sky looks. The color of white paper. The way people walk. Doorknobs. Everything. Then I get used to the place and I don't notice those things anymore. So only by forgetting can I see the place again as it really is.

Architecture theory is very interesting.

What's been missing from digital music sales has been the possibility of added depth. In a printed package one can only include so many images and so much text - for example - but digitally it's wide open. For the most part at the moment we get less information for slightly less money - though we could be getting a lot more.

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

Real sadness is such an all-encompassing intense thing that it takes you out of your humdrum existence. If you can still function, you want to show it while it's peaking. So when people tell you to cheer up, it's not always the best thing.

When it became easy enough to do dairy online, then I just thought, "Oh, I'll start doing this. I'll put the parts online that aren't going to get me in trouble. I'll save the rest for myself." It became also this kind of self-therapy. I could write about stuff that was bothering me, or personal stuff. And the very personal stuff I could edit out. But it was kind of the catharsis of getting it out and writing about it, that made me think, "Okay, I see why people do this, why they keep these diaries." So I thought, "Well, let's see what happens when I post some of it."

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