David Byrne Quotes

The world isn't logical, it's a song.

London's tempo is 122.86 beats per minute.

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.

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

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

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

It's like 60 Minutes on acid.

It's more about the stuff you think about when you're getting from place to place on a bicycle than it is about actually riding the bicycle.

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

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

Life tends to be an accumulation of a lot of mundane decisions, which often gets ignored.

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

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

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

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.

The better a singer's voice, the harder it is to believe what they're saying.

If anything, a lot of electronic music is music that no one listens to at home, hardly. It's really only to be heard when everyone's out enjoying it.

It didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

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

Is giving in to the photographer's presumably natural impulse to compose and light well sometimes okay and not okay other times?

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

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.

People will do odd things if you give them money.

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

I should watch network television, or daytime television, because I'm not sure who all these people are who keep getting referred to in blogs and newspapers. I better get myself culturally attuned.

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

Another Elvis will not come along. He got wasted, but it's alright.

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?

Physical contact is a human necessity.

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

I'm concerned that my technical skills have advanced to the point where I can get closer to what I'm aiming for, which is not such a good thing.

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

We don't make music, it makes us

I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's bullshit.

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

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

We live in ugly times.

I have something to say about the difference between American and European cities, but I forgot what it was. I have it written down at home somewhere.

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

Architecture theory is very interesting.

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.

If I'm feeling that I have an angle or something to say or something where in a way I'm having a conversation with myself, that's immensely pleasurable.

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.

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.

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

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.

A lot of that worked itself out in the recording.

A lot of cities are making a real effort, neighborhood by neighborhood, to make themselves into a place where life can be pretty good.

You might say that the universe plays the blues.

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