21 David Byrne Quotes

David Byrne quotes

1. From his film True Stories:

2. In the self-interview on Stop Making Sense:

3. On the music of Talking Heads, from Channel 4's The 100 Greatest Albums:

4. (On why he hates the term 'world music'): It's a way of relegating this 'thing' into the realm of something exotic and therefore cute, weird but safe, because exotica is beautiful but irrelevant.

5. To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

6. There is a finite number of jokes in the universe.

7. Nuclear weapons could destroy all life on earth, if used properly.

1. 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.

2. Human beings have the incredible capacity for denial. I think they do. And although it's really hard to believe, I have my doubts. But my feeling is that first they have to convince themselves. First they have to justify this stuff to themselves and if they can do that, even for just the moment that it's coming out their mouth, then they can kind of mouth it with kind of believable sincerity, even if some of us.

3. I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don't think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me.

4. I ride my bike almost every day here in New York. It's getting safer to do so, but I do have to be fairly alert when riding on the streets as opposed to riding on the Hudson River bike path or similar protected lanes.

5. 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.

6. I think sometimes - not always - I write songs that are accessible.

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

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

9. 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.

10. A lot of that worked itself out in the recording.

11. I came to New York to be a fine artist - that was my ambition.

12. 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.

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

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