Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don't buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down. "

Related Quotes:

" 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

Paris

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

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

David Byrne

Trust

Read

" I can't deny that label-support gave me a leg up - though not every successful artist needs it. "

David Byrne

Artist

Leg

" Well, Marx is having a comeback. I hear him mentioned a lot in terms of the global financial situation and the general sense of injustice out there. A lot of economic experts in America refer to him without actually using the M word, but he's around. "

" I certainly agree that putting everything into little genres is counterproductive. You're not going to get too many surprises if you only focus on the stuff that fits inside the box that you know. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

David Byrne

Fire

First

" We tend to mistake music for the physical object. "

" Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don't have names for what they are or haven't identified them all. We can't pinpoint exactly what makes each city's people unique yet. "

" 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. "

" Frank Lloyd Wright... his things were beautiful but not very functional. "

" I think I had a mild case of Asperger's as a younger guy, but that typically just wears off after a while. "

" People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that's pretty much all you can ask. "

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

" I'm proud of 'Stop Making Sense,' but it's a little bit of an albatross; I can't compete with it, but I can't ignore it either. "

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

" 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. "

" I didn't have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff. "

" I encourage people not to be passive consumers of music and of culture in general. And feeling like, yeah, you can enjoy the products of professionals, but that doesn't mean you don't have to completely give up the reins and give up every connection to music or whatever it happens to be. "

" I don't like begging money from producers. "

David Byrne

Begging

Producers

" 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. "

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

" In retrospect, I can see I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense! "

" The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror - not the glamour and sophistication the pushers in the tobacco industry try to portray. "

" When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that's not something I could do. "

" I've made money, and I've been ripped off. I've had creative freedom, and I've been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will. "

" The physical sensation of gliding with the wind in your face is exhilarating. That automatic activity of pedalling, when you have to be awake but not think too much, allows you to let subconscious thoughts bubble up, and things seem to just sort themselves out. And the adrenaline wakes you up if you weren't properly alert. "

" On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the goings-on in one's own town. "

" 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. "