David Byrne Quotes

I don't care how impossible it seems.

In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they're...

Powerpoint presentations are a kind of theater, a kind of augmented stand-up. Too often it's a borin...

There's a good chance that you might be inspired by ideas that originate outside of yourself.

In the early days, I might have gotten on stage and begun to sing as a desperate attempt to communic...

Presuming that there is such a thing as "progress" when it comes to music, and that music is "better...

I wouldn't be surprised if poetry - poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled wit...

It's a bit like sympathetic magic in a way: the usual Western presumption that 'primitive' rituals m...

There are two conversations going on at the same time: the story and a conversation about how the st...

There's always room for Jell-O

A soap opera character on the bar TV says, "You killed him, you smothered him with doughnuts!" Anoth...

Everyone was doing that in their own way, rejecting things and moving on. It's just a part of discov...

I pick up a copy of Newsweek on the plane and immediately notice how biased, slanted, and opinionate...

It was a uniform that signified that one was a kind of downtown aesthete; not necessarily nihilistic...

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

Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.

Music written by teams makes the authorship of a piece indistinct. Could it be that when hearing a s...

Any kid will tell you that, yes, their music is both an escape and a survival mechanism, and that so...

The radio was shouting at you, pleading with you, and seducing you.

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

Complete freedom is as much curse as boon; freedom within strict and well-defined confines is, to me...

I also realized that there were lots of unacknowledged theater forms going on all around. Our lives ...

According to the science writer Philip Ball, when it was pointed out to musicologist Deryck Cooketha...

I don't listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don't have a car.

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

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has e...

It's not always been a happy marriage. I guess I wanted a quick fix.

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

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

Music eats its young and gives birth to a new hybrid creature.

It's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support J...

On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the go...

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

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

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of dru...

Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects.

I'm not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, b...

The online music magazine Pitchfork once wrote that I would collaborate with anyone for a bag of Dor...

Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and stil...

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly wh...

The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror - not the glamour and sophistication the pushe...

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

One forgets that part of one's performance is one's history—or sometimes the lack of it. You're play...

Recordings aren't time sensitive. You can hear the music you want whether it's morning, noon, or the...

I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe--but j...

You might say that the universe plays the blues.

But at times words can be a dangerous addition to music — they can pin it down. Words imply that the...

The mixtapes we made for ourselves were musical mirrors. The sadness, anger, or frustration you migh...