David Byrne Quotes & Trivia



Quotes

A lot of the English bands came along and a lot of them sounded kind of all the same.

All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.

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

Architecture theory is very interesting.

Everything's intentional. It's just filling in the dots.

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

I am attracted to something that looks conservative on the surface, but there's something that betrays it, there's a twist.

I couldn't take pictures of green rolling hills.

I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching.

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

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

I had demons and felt socially inept.

I just heard a bootleg record of Bjork unplugged. She hasn't quite cracked it in America; she's probably a little too out there.

I knew I wanted to have a doll of myself on the cover. I thought, I wanna see myself as a Ken doll.

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

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

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

I subscribe to the myth that an artist's creativity comes from torment. Once that's fixed, what do you draw on?

I try never to wear my own clothes, I pretend I'm someone else.

I wanted to be a secret agent and an astronaut, preferably at the same time.

I'd like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

I'm afraid that everything will get homogenized and be the same.

I'm afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn't fit that will become unnecessary.

I'm guarded; I don't talk much.

I'm kind of fascinated by this global culture mixing with local culture and producing something that's neither.

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.

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

It's not always been a happy marriage. I guess I wanted a quick fix.

My daughter has a cat and I feed it.

My favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food.

Oh, Slick Willie - the Gulf War was his baby.

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.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.

Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

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

That's the one for my tombstone... Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?

That's the thing about pictures: they seduce you.

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

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

There's less irony than there used to be. I'm sure that will disappoint some people.

To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.

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