David Bowie Quotes

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

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.

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

My father worked for a children’s home called Dr. Barnardo’s Homes. They’re a charity.

Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties.

I would drive to gigs in my tiny little Fiat. I would shoot up and down the M1 to play at various places.

Tony Visconti and I had been wanting to work together again for a few years now. Both of us had fairly large commitments and for a long time we couldn’t see a space in which we could get anything together.

I’ll tell you who I absolutely adore: Ian McEwan.

Frankly, if I could get away with not having to perform, I’d be very happy. It’s not my favorite thing to do.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance.

GYBE are among my, erm, two favourite Montreal bands, Arcade Fire being the other.

With a suit, always wear big British shoes, the ones with large welts. There’s nothing worse than dainty little Italian jobs at the end of the leg line.

I don’t crave applause. I’m not one of those guys who comes alive on stage. I’m much more alive at home, I think.

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.

Funk, I don’t think I have anything to do with funk. I’ve never considered myself funky.

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

But I’m pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people.

I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.

I have all the admiration in the world for somebody like Bono, who really puts himself on the line and tries actively to do something about our world situation.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

I’m not one of those guys that has a great worldview. I kind of deal with terror and fear and isolation and abandonment.

I’m responsible for starting a whole new school of pretension.

There are times when I prefer a cerebral moment with an artist, and I’ll just enjoy the wit of a Picabia or a Duchamp. It amuses me that they thought that what they did would be a good way of making art.

Since the departure of good old-fashioned entertainers the re-emergence of somebody who wants to be an entertainer has unfortunately become a synonym for camp. I don’t think I’m camper than any other person who felt at home on stage, and felt more at home on stage than he did offstage.

I’ve never responded well to entrenched negative thinking.

The humanists‘ replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you’ll either save yourself or you’ll be immortal. Of course, that’s a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there’s no ethical progress whatsoever.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

I’m not very articulate.

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.

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.

I thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing. And because nobody else was ever doing my songs, I felt – you know, I had to go out and do them.

I don’t profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

I don’t have a problem with ageing – in fact, I embrace that aspect of it. And am able to and obviously am going to be able to quite easily… it doesn’t faze me at all.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

I never really felt like a rock singer or a rock star or whatever.

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

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

There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

Radio in England is nonexistent. It’s very bad English use of a media system, typically English use.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

I guess it’s flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.

All Montreal bands have around nine members, I believe.

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.

I’m not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it’s the recording or the performance side.

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

If I had a talent, it was for looking askew at everything, possibly more than my contemporaries. But I had to really push myself to be a writer.

Nearly all the synth work on Heathen is mine and some of the piano.

Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I’m referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

It is amazing how a new child can refocus one’s direction seconds after its birth.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

I wanted to be Gerry Mulligan, only, see, I didn’t have any kind of technique. So I thought, well, baritone sax is kind of easier; I can manage that – except I couldn’t afford a baritone, so I bought an alto, which was the same fingering.