David Byrne famous quotes

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.
-- David Byrne

#Love #Common #Sometimes

By the time Talking Heads were starting, my feeling was to throw out everything and start from scratch onstage; strip it down to as close to zero as you can get and then you can make it yours.
-- David Byrne

#Zero #Talking #Feelings

Cycling can be lonely, but in a good way.
-- David Byrne

#Lonely #Cycling #Way

With a lot of what we take to be true feelings, especially on pop records, we feel them because they're cleverly crafted. And because the words are written by somebody who knows how to craft words and draw on those things and convey those feelings. That doesn't mean they're dishonest. But it also doesn't mean that it's all just pure primitive emotion spilling out.
-- David Byrne

#Mean #Feelings #Records

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

#Advertisements

There's a pervasive feeling that when somebody sings a song and records a song on a record, that it's their true feeling.
-- David Byrne

#Song #Feelings #Records

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.
-- David Byrne

#People #Creative #Intuition

Sometimes the European and North American public like some things to be exotic and kept at arm's length. They don't want sometimes to know that foreign artists are doing something that's at least as relevant as what's being done here.
-- David Byrne

#Artist #Exotic #Done

I don't care how impossible it seems.
-- David Byrne

#Care #Impossible

The most common music that you hear anywhere in the world now basically has its roots in that union that happened in the last century, or in the century before that. That kind of music that's groove or beat oriented just didn't exist in lots of cultures before that.
-- David Byrne

#Roots #Culture #World

My favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food.
-- David Byrne

#Food #Dinner #Leftovers

It seemed [there are] musical nodes on the planet where cultures meet and mix, sometimes as a result of unfortunate circumstances, like slavery or something else, in places like New Orleans and Havana and Brazil. And those are places where the European culture and indigenous culture and African culture all met and lived together, and some new kind of culture and especially music came out of that.
-- David Byrne

#New Orleans #Musical #Together

To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.
-- David Byrne

#Inspirational #Music #Responsibility

My opinion is that somebody certainly has the right to do cartoons that make fun of somebody else's religion. But to reprint them just to provoke a fight and just to provoke it like thumbing your nose at someone else and going, "What are you gonna do about it?
-- David Byrne

#Fun #Fighting #Cartoon

To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.
-- David Byrne

#Dance #Dancing #Shakes

I'm really curious how the private listening - iPods, people listening on their phones - how that might eventual effect music. There'll be a whole genre of music that really works on a kind of one to one headphone or earbud level but doesn't really work when you play it in a room.
-- David Byrne

#Phones #Play #Ipods

The very best [infographics] engender and facilitate an insight by visual means — allow us to grasp some relationship quickly and easily that otherwise would take many pages and illustrations and tables to convey. Insight seems to happen most often when data sets are crossed in the design of the piece — when we can quickly see the effects on something over time, for example, or view how factors like income, race, geography, or diet might affect other data. When that happens, there’s an instant “Aha!”…
-- David Byrne

#Mean #Race #Views

People are renovating places and opening ambitious new venues. That's one thing that music does. It gets people out of their houses, and gets them hanging out together.
-- David Byrne

#People #House #Ambitious

Everything's intentional. It's just filling in the dots.
-- David Byrne

#Dots #Filling

Music is relegated to an underground, relatively obscure group of listeners. It's partly because of the nature of the medium. With a piece of visual art, you can look at something ugly, brutal and in your face, but it's kind of - there it is. It doesn't take you over in the same way that putting on the music at a certain volume does.
-- David Byrne

#Art #Groups #Doe

Living "in" a story, being part of a narrative, is much more satisfying than living without one. I don't always know what narrative it is, because I'm living my life and not always reflecting on it, but as I edit these pages I am aware that I have an urge to see my sometimes random wandering as having a plot, a purpose guided by some underlying story.
-- David Byrne

#Plot #Purpose #Stories

There are a lot of people that don't scour websites regularly or read music reviews. They need whatever, the other kinds of stuff, whether it's an appearance on Lettterman or posters or ads. They need to kind of be hit more in the face and be told that there's something new out there.
-- David Byrne

#People #Needs #Stuff

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.
-- David Byrne

#Emotional #Body #Bass

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

#Secret #Agents #Astronaut

I found music to be the therapy of choice.
-- David Byrne

#Choices #Found #Therapy

I try to write about small things. Paper, animals, a house…love is kind of big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp.
-- David Byrne

#Song #Writing #Animal

I'd been keeping tour diaries, and especially when I go somewhere where I felt the experience might be interesting, like Eastern Europe or South America or whatever, where the whole perception of what I was doing there and stuff that I was seeing and music I was hearing, I could put all that into a diary.
-- David Byrne

#Europe #America #Interesting

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

#Cycling #Joy #Faster

Some things, I feel like no, I never could have the depth of experience of their own music and culture - but sometimes if I'm collaborating with somebody, they're interested in me bringing my own stuff into their thing, and sometimes that works.
-- David Byrne

#Depth #Culture #Stuff

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

#People #Faces #Stage

I'm being probably naïve, but I would like to think that once something moves you and you have an emotional involvement with it, and you see some relevance in it to your own life, then it's a little bit harder, maybe, to look at the people that produced it as being just exotic others that don't have any connection to you or relevance to you.
-- David Byrne

#Moving #Emotional #Thinking

Crime is a job. Sex is a job. Growing up is a job. School is a job. Going to parties is a job. Religion is a job. Being creative is a job
-- David Byrne

#Jobs #Sex #Growing Up

A lot of that worked itself out in the recording.
-- David Byrne

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

#Past #Why Not #Building

There's still a feeling that uncensored emotions make a good song. They don't. Pure emotion is just somebody screaming at you, or crying. It doesn't communicate anything.
-- David Byrne

#Song #Feelings #Emotion

Creative work is more accurately a machine that digs down and finds stuff, emotional stuff that will someday be raw material that can be used to produce more stuff, stuff like itself - clay to be available for future use.
-- David Byrne

#Emotional #Creative #Clay

There's a great temptation to clean everything up and make everything more perfect. You have to know when to stop and stop doing it, or you might end up with something that sounds metronomic.
-- David Byrne

#Perfect #Temptation #Sound

Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.
-- David Byrne

#Beauty #Real #Littles

I think sometimes I get carried away, like I'm speaking to an imaginary audience rather than just trying to figure something out for myself. Ideally, I try to balance that - that I'm asking these questions of myself, how does this work, why does this happen, what's going on here.
-- David Byrne

#Thinking #Balance #Trying

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.
-- David Byrne

#Thinking #People #Culture

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

#Music #Translate

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

#Talking #Community #Concerts

I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously.
-- David Byrne

#Reality #Uprising #Littles

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

#Video #Used #Concerts

I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea-- do I have to choose between the two?
-- David Byrne

#Two #Sea #Stories

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.
-- David Byrne

#Cylinders #Ephemeral #Music Is

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.
-- David Byrne

#Color #Sky #White

People in Latin America... love America from afar and emulate America in some ways but also hate a lot of things that America does to them.
-- David Byrne

#Hate #Latin #America

You can know or not know how a car runs and still enjoy riding in a car.
-- David Byrne

#Running #Car #Riding

People use irony as a defense mechanism.
-- David Byrne

#People #Defense #Use

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

#Different #Band

PowerPoint may not be of any use for you in a presentation, but it may liberate you in another way, an artistic way. Who knows.
-- David Byrne

#Use #May #Way

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

#Made

There are plenty of people who are, I think, completely racist who love hip-hop.
-- David Byrne

#Thinking #People #Hip Hop

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?
-- David Byrne

#Chaos #Assumption #Mess

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they're intended to be used for.
-- David Byrne

#Use #Used #Software

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

#House #Tin #Ridicule

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

#Writing #Stuff #Sometimes

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.
-- David Byrne

#Fun #Home #Trying

Do I wear a helmet? Ugh. I do when I'm riding through a precarious part of town, meaning Midtown traffic. But when I'm riding on secure protected lanes or on the paths that run along the Hudson or through Central Park - no, I don't wear the dreaded helmet then.
-- David Byrne

#Running #Central Park #Towns

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.
-- David Byrne

#Song #Attitude #Two

A dissection of music perception and creation that starts slowly and inexorably builds to a grand finish. I loved reading that listening to music coordinates more disparate parts of the brain than almost anything else--and playing music uses even more! Despite illuminating a lot of what goes on this book doesn't "spoil" enjoyment- it only deepens the beautiful mystery that is music.
-- David Byrne

#Beautiful #Book #Reading

Maybe this is all a bit of a myth, a willful desire to give each place its own unique aura. But doesn't any collective belief eventually become a kind of truth? If enough people act as if something is true, isn't it indeed "true," not objectively, but in the sense that it will determine how they will behave? The myth of unique urban character and unique sensibilities in different cities exists because we want it to exist.
-- David Byrne

#Character #Unique #Cities

We do express our emotions, our reactions to events, breakups and infatuations, but the way we do that - the art of it - is in putting them into prescribed forms or squeezing them into new forms that perfectly fit some emerging context. That’s part of the creative process, and we do it instinctively; we internalize it, like birds do. And it’s a joy to sing, like the birds do.
-- David Byrne

#Breakup #Art #Creative

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.
-- David Byrne

#Cheer #Real #Sadness

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

#Attitude #Musical #Style

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.
-- David Byrne

#Thinking #Age #Degrees

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?
-- David Byrne

#Attitude #Thinking #Symphony

I've rarely kept my distance from kind of - I don't know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, 'Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.'
-- David Byrne

#Distance #Thinking #People

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.
-- David Byrne

#Moving #Artist #Drawing

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.
-- David Byrne

#Song #Artist #Cds

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.
-- David Byrne

#Thinking #Car #People

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.
-- David Byrne

#Thinking #People #Faster

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.
-- David Byrne

#New York #Paris #Littles

My favorite term for a new kind of performance is "security theater." In this genre, we watch as ritualized inspections and patdowns create the illusion of security. It's a form that has become common since 9/11, and even the government agencies that participate in this activity acknowledge,off the record, that it is indeed a species of theater.
-- David Byrne

#Agency #Government #Watches

Obviously, you go through a lot of emotional turmoil in a divorce.
-- David Byrne

#Divorce #Emotional #Turmoil

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

#Appreciate #Musician #Certain

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.
-- David Byrne

#Car #Radio

I knew I wanted to have a doll of myself on the cover. I thought, I wanna see myself as a Ken doll.
-- David Byrne

#Dolls #Wanted

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

#Trouble #Practicality

Analysis is like a lobotomy. Who wants to have all their edges shaved off?
-- David Byrne

#Analysis #Want #Lobotomy

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

#Writing #Agendas #Stuff

I couldn't take pictures of green rolling hills.
-- David Byrne

#Rolling #Green #Hills

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

#Thinking #Everyday #Relevant

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

#Beautiful #Frank

Most of our lives aren't that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details.
-- David Byrne

#Drama #Details #Exciting

Artists are notoriously snooty and suspicious of anything coming from the business community.
-- David Byrne

#Artist #Community