Top 180 David Byrne Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “I knew I wanted to have a doll of myself on the cover. I thought, I wanna see myself as a Ken doll.”

— David Byrne

102. “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.”

— David Byrne

103. “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.”

— David Byrne

104. “I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.”

— David Byrne

105. “I’m afraid that everything will get homogenized and be the same.”

— David Byrne

106. “I don’t like begging money from producers.”

— David Byrne

107. “There’s a pervasive feeling that when somebody sings a song and records a song on a record, that it’s their true feeling.”

— David Byrne

108. “There are plenty of people who are, I think, completely racist who love hip-hop.”

— David Byrne

109. “You might say that the universe plays the blues.”

— David Byrne

110. “People will do odd things if you give them money...”

— David Byrne

111. “With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.”

— David Byrne

112. “I’m no Lance Armstrong, but I do use a bike to get from place to place in Manhattan, a little bit of Brooklyn.”

— David Byrne

113. “You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.”

— David Byrne

114. “Is giving in to the photographer’s presumably natural impulse to compose and light well sometimes okay and not okay other times?”

— David Byrne

115. “I didn’t have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.”

— David Byrne

116. “The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.”

— David Byrne

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

— David Byrne

118. “There’s more good music being made now than ever before.”

— David Byrne

119. “London’s tempo is 122.86 beats per minute.”

— David Byrne

120. “My take is that the kind of complexity which says we can always generate complexity from simple interactions following for example rules.”

— David Byrne

121. “A lot of that worked itself out in the recording.”

— David Byrne

122. “The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has a ’meaning’and each of us is unique.”

— David Byrne

123. “I’m very much into making lists and breaking things apart into categories.”

— David Byrne

124. “It’s not music you would use to get a girl into bed. If anything, you’re going to frighten her off.”

— David Byrne

125. “Living “in” a story, being part of a narrative, is much more satisfying than living without one. I don’t always know what narrative it is, because I’m living my life and not always reflecting on it, but as I edit these pages I am aware that I have an urge to see my sometimes random wandering as having a plot, a purpose guided by some underlying story.”

— David Byrne

126. “I still feel like if I can get a song to work with, say, a basic beat, a rhythm, some chord changes, and a melody, a vocal melody – if it works with that, then I feel it’s written and there’s something there.”

— David Byrne

127. “I’m not all about money, but, like most musicians, I am about survival.”

— David Byrne

128. “The Heads were the only band on that scene that had a groove.”

— David Byrne

129. “I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.”

— David Byrne

130. “Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.”

— David Byrne

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

— David Byrne

132. “I’ve been in beautiful landscapes where one is tempted to whip out a camera and take a picture. I’ve learned to resist that.”

— David Byrne

133. “Mythologist Joseph Campbell, however, thought that the temple and cathedral are attractive because they spatially and acoustically recreate the cave, where early humans first expressed their spiritual yearnings.”

— David Byrne

134. “I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.”

— David Byrne

135. “There’s always room for Jell-O.”

— David Byrne

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

— David Byrne

137. “I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously.”

— David Byrne

138. “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.”

— David Byrne

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

— David Byrne

140. “Always be skeptical about simplicity.”

— David Byrne

141. “I came to New York to be a fine artist – that was my ambition.”

— David Byrne

142. “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.”

— David Byrne

143. “The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world’s popular music is a good thing, for the most part.”

— David Byrne

144. “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

145. “That’s the thing about pictures: they seduce you.”

— David Byrne

146. “Facts just twist the truth around.”

— David Byrne

147. “I think sometimes – not always – I write songs that are accessible.”

— David Byrne

148. “In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they’re singing a song about breaking up or being in a bad way. For an actor this would be anathema, it would destroy the illusion, but with singing one can have it both ways. As a singer, you can be transparent and reveal yourself on stage, in that moment, and at the same time be the person whose story is being told in the song. Not too many kinds of performance allow that.”

— David Byrne

149. “I don’t think I have grand visions that I will never achieve.”

— David Byrne

150. “Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.”

— David Byrne