Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I think much has been made of this alter ego business. I mean, I actually stopped creating characters in 1975 - for albums, anyway. "

Related Quotes:

" Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age. "

" As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn't really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn't have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself. "

" These are all personal crises, I'm sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It's as simple as that. "

" All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker. "

" There's a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I'm affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn't want to leave. He likes it very much. "

" On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts. "

" I'm very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn't think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that's happening to me. I'm rather surprised at who I am, because I'm actually like my dad! "

" I'm not very articulate. "

" I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously. "

" The skin of my character in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' was some concoction, a spermatozoon of an alien nature that was obscene and weird-looking. "

" The name Zahra was to have been lman's own name at birth, but a senior member of the family changed it to lman at the last minute. "

" I think in the '70s that there was a general feeling of chaos, a feeling that the idea of the '60s as 'ideal' was a misnomer. Nothing seemed ideal anymore. Everything seemed in-between. "

" I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir. "

" Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It's because I'm not quite an atheist and it worries me. There's that little bit that holds on: 'Well, I'm almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.' "

" What I like to do is try to make a difference with the work I do. "

Make A Difference

" Now I realize that from '72 through to about '76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn't have been more rock star. "

" I would dream. I focused all my attention on going to America. The subculture, James Dean, the rock n' roll, the beat writers. "

" However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums. "

" I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer... I write. "

" I'll tell you who I absolutely adore: Ian McEwan. "

" The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years. "

" The Americans at heart are a pure and noble people; things to them are in black and white. It's either 'rawk' or it's not. We Brits putter around in the grey area. "

Black And White

" I've always tended to write songs prolifically. "

" Songs don't have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I've done is about alienation... about where you fit in society. "

" What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That's what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people. "

" But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him. "

" When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding. "

" I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he's up there with Bryan Ferry. "

" I think Mustique is Duchampian - it will always provide an endless source of delight. "

" What I do is I write mainly about very personal and rather lonely feelings, and I explore them in a different way each time. You know, what I do is not terribly intellectual. I'm a pop singer for Christ's sake. As a person, I'm fairly uncomplicated. "