“I've rarely kept my distance from kind of - I don't know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, 'Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.'”
Politics
“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.”
HomeAll Quotes by David Byrne
“There's more good music being made now than ever before.”
Music“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.”
Love“The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.”
Music“We tend to mistake music for the physical object.”
Music“You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.”
Music“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.”
Music“It's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, 'Well, yeah,' but you start to think, 'Why not, though?' What makes one more valuable than another?”
Attitude“There's something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There's something that invites all this obsessive behavior.”
Music“I read the NY Times but I don't trust all of it.”
Trust“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.”
Home“We don't make music - it makes us.”
Music“I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it's a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.”
Home“You can know or not know how a car runs and still enjoy riding in a car.”
Car“To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.”
Trust“My favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food.”
Food“Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.”
Beauty“I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.”
Business“The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror - not the glamour and sophistication the pushers in the tobacco industry try to portray.”
Death“So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.”
Music