To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

Throw off your worries when you throw off your clothes at night.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

I didn’t get depressed, I don’t get depressed.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.

‚Fame‘ exhausts me.

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

It seems like we wake up and it’s a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, ‚What the hell am I doing?‘

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

Nobody enjoys the ‚little show about nothing‘ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

We all get weary sometimes, and we tend to think that life is what makes us weary.

A man’s only as old as the woman he feels.

I think beating myself up sometimes and knowing I am not happy when I do it makes me work harder to do a good job.

Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

Good planning is important. I’ve also regarded a sense of humor as one of the most important things on a big expedition. When you’re in a difficult or dangerous situation, or when you’re depressed about the chances of success, someone who can make you laugh eases the tension.

The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.

Sure, I can get a little bit jealous. The good part about jealousy is that it comes from passion. It’s also the dangerous part and it’s an ugly emotion that hurts.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

When I die, I’m gonna leave my body to science fiction.

You can’t trample infidels when you’re a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.

Every once in a while I get the highly inappropriate proposal which is like, ‚Wow, Really! You don’t even know me and I don’t know you at all, and you want that to happen? Tonight? Ok, I get off work at 7.30.‘

If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society, or what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

I’ve often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

I know so many people who feel hopeless, and they ask me, ‚What should I do?‘ And I say: ‚Act. Do something.‘ Because that is the best medicine against sadness and depression.

Whatever I’m feeling, whatever I’m going through, whatever mood I’m in… If I’m feeling like dancing or clubbing, then it will be reflected in the music. If I’m feeling dark and vulnerable, then it will reflect in the music, too.

I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.

I have no problem yelling at anybody’s kid – free of charge!

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.

It’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

What keeps me up at night? Anxiety. Anxiety, the inability to go to sleep, it’s quite literally that.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

The Canteen Boy, the reason you feel bad for him and you can laugh is because he, and I guess a lot of my characters, they don’t notice they’re getting made fun of. So they’ll say something back that’s not that great a quip, but in their mind they won the argument.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

Smiles are the language of love.

Fear is real, but so is love.

In my house I’m the boss, my wife is just the decision maker.

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

If danger arises in the present moment, there may be an emotion. There may even be pain. But that’s a challenge, not a problem. For a problem to exist, you need time and repetitive mind activity.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

You know an odd feeling? Sitting on the toilet eating a chocolate candy bar.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

I was a class clown. At 12, I was definitely clowning. I was making all the jokes. But I was smart, so the teachers didn’t know what to do with me.

Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.

We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression.