David Bowie

David Bowie

24 quotes

David Bowie is an English musician and actor whose words have traveled far beyond their original audience. Beyond David Bowie, was an English singer, songwriter and actor, David Bowie proved equally skilled at capturing ideas in a sentence or two. 30 of David Bowie's sharpest quotes live here, spanning themes of Music, Work, Best, Dad, and Truth. A line that stays with you: "I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music."

“I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.”

— David Bowie

Music

All Quotes by David Bowie

“I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me.”

— David Bowie

Work

“But I'm pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people.”

— David Bowie

Work

“The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.”

— David Bowie

Truth

“I suppose for me as an artist it wasn't always just about expressing my work I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.”

— David Bowie

Work

“I realized the other day that I've lived in New York longer than I've lived anywhere else. It's amazing: I am a New Yorker. It's strange I never thought I would be.”

— David Bowie

Amazing

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

— David Bowie

Best

“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.”

— David Bowie

Home

“I'm very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy I didn't think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that's happening to me. I'm rather surprised at who I am, because I'm actually like my dad!”

— David Bowie

Dad

“It would be my guess that Madonna is not a very happy woman. From my own experience, having gone through persona changes like that, that kind of clawing need to be the center of attention is not a pleasant place to be.”

— David Bowie

Experience

“There's a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I'm affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn't want to leave. He likes it very much.”

— David Bowie

Family

“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.”

— David Bowie

Music

“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.”

— David Bowie

Religion

“I believe that I often bring out the best in somebody's talents.”

— David Bowie

Best

“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. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.”

— David Bowie

Intelligence

“To not be modest about it, you'll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I've worked with have done their best work by far with me.”

— David Bowie

Best

“On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.”

— David Bowie

Music

“The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years.”

— David Bowie

Music

“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.”

— David Bowie

Music

“I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.”

— David Bowie

Age

“Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left.”

— David Bowie

Music