Top 180 David Byrne Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “I read the NY Times but I don’t trust all of it.”

— David Byrne

152. “I resent the implication that I’m less of a musician and a worse person for not appreciating certain works.”

— David Byrne

153. “It was the best show I’d ever seen; it was so tight and choreographed that it seemed to be from another planet, a planet where everyone was incredible.”

— David Byrne

154. “We have been taught not to like things. Finally somebody said it was OK to like things. This was a great relief.”

— David Byrne

155. “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.”

— David Byrne

156. “Western music in the Middle Ages was performed in these stone-walled gothic cathedrals, and in architecturally similar monasteries and cloisters.”

— David Byrne

157. “The classical players who think all popular music is simple tend not to hear the nuances involved, so naturally they can’t play very well in that style. Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects. When everything is visible and appears to be dumb, that’s when the details take on larger meanings.”

— David Byrne

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

— David Byrne

159. “Music eats its young and gives birth to a new hybrid creature.”

— David Byrne

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

— David Byrne

161. “Yeah, anybody can go in with two turntables and a microphone or a home studio sampler and a little cassette deck or whatever and make records in their bedrooms.”

— David Byrne

162. “I also realized that there were lots of unacknowledged theater forms going on all around. Our lives are filled with performances that have been so woven into our daily routine that the artificial and performative aspect has slipped into invisibility.”

— David Byrne

163. “Johannes Kepler published his book Harmonices Mundi in 1619. In it he proposed that it was the Creator who “decorated” the whole world, using mathematical and musical harmonic proportions. The spiritual and the physical are united.”

— David Byrne

164. “What do we need music to do? How do we visit the land in our head and the place in our heart that music is so good at taking us to?”

— David Byrne

165. “Presuming that there is such a thing as “progress” when it comes to music, and that music is “better” now than it used to be, is typical of the high self-regard of those who live in the present. It is a myth. Creativity doesn’t “improve.”

— David Byrne

166. “I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.”

— David Byrne

167. “People probably heard a greater quantity of music, and a greater variety, on these devices than they would ever hear in person in their lifetimes.”

— David Byrne

168. “Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.”

— David Byrne

169. “Musicians sort of knew this already – that the emotional center is not the technical center, that funky grooves are not square, and what sounds like a simple beat can either be sensuous or simply a metronomic timekeeper, depending on the player.”

— David Byrne

170. “I ride on the shoulder of a road that is lined with chain stores, none of them specific to this area. Everyone who works in them is therefore an employee hired by some anonymous distant corporation. They probably are only allowed to make small decisions and they have almost no stake or investment in the place where they work.”

— David Byrne

171. “Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they’re going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It’s just a given law.”

— David Byrne

172. “Schools are for training people how to listen to other people.”

— David Byrne

173. “Most of our lives aren’t that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details.”

— David Byrne

174. “The performing musician was now expected to write and create for two very different spaces: the live venue, and the device that could play a recording or receive a transmission. Socially and acoustically, these spaces were worlds apart. But the compositions were expected to be the same!”

— David Byrne

175. “There are two conversations going on at the same time: the story and a conversation about how the story is being told.”

— David Byrne

176. “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.”

— David Byrne

177. “One forgets that part of one’s performance is one’s history – or sometimes the lack of it. You’re playing against what an audience knows, what they expect. This seems to be true of all performers; there’s baggage that gets carried into the venue that we can’t see.”

— David Byrne

178. “If they liked a tune, they wanted to hear it again – now! The vibe was more like CBGB than your typical contemporary opera house.”

— David Byrne

179. “It’s often said that proximity doesn’t matter so much now – that we have virtual offices and online communities and social networks, so it doesn’t matter where we are physically. But I’m skeptical. I think online communities tend to group like with like, which is fine and perfect for some tasks, but sometimes inspiration comes from accidental meetings and encounters with people outside one’s own demographic, and that’s less likely if you only communicate with your “friends.”

— David Byrne

180. “What begins as a random walk often ends up taking you somewhere, somewhere that you later realise was exactly where you wanted to go.”

— David Byrne

181. “Song references are like emotional shortcuts and social acronyms.”

— David Byrne

182. “Music as social glue, as a self-empowering change agent, is maybe more profound than how perfectly a specific song is composed or how immaculately tight a band is.”

— David Byrne