Best 200 quotes of David Byrne on MyQuotes

A bike is the world's most used form of transportation

Always be skeptical about simplicity.

A dissection of music perception and creation that starts slowly and inexorably builds to a grand finish. I loved reading that listening to music coordinates more disparate parts of the brain than almost anything else--and playing music uses even more! Despite illuminating a lot of what goes on this book doesn't "spoil" enjoyment- it only deepens the beautiful mystery that is music.

A little touch of chaos and danger makes a city sexy.

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

A lot of cities are making a real effort, neighborhood by neighborhood, to make themselves into a place where life can be pretty good.

Architecture theory is very interesting.

Artists are notoriously snooty and suspicious of anything coming from the business community.

As everything becomes digitized, there's the idea that things that can't be digitized become more valuable.

As I define it, rock and roll is dead. The attitude isn't dead, but the music is no longer vital. It doesn't have the same meaning. The attitude, though, is still very much alive - and it still informs other kinds of music.

As music becomes less of a thing--a cylinder, a cassette, a disc--and more ephemeral, perhaps we will begin to assign an increasing value to live performances again.

Body odor is the window to the soul.

Book learning, or intelligence of one sort, doesn't guarantee you intelligence of another sort.You can behave just as stupidly with a good college education.

By the time Talking Heads were starting, my feeling was to throw out everything and start from scratch onstage; strip it down to as close to zero as you can get and then you can make it yours.

Creative work is more accurately a machine that digs down and finds stuff, emotional stuff that will someday be raw material that can be used to produce more stuff, stuff like itself - clay to be available for future use.

Crime is a job. Sex is a job. Growing up is a job. School is a job. Going to parties is a job. Religion is a job. Being creative is a job

Cycling can be lonely, but in a good way.

Cycling is a joy and faster than many other modes of transport, depending on the time of day. It clears the head.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

Do I wear a helmet? Ugh. I do when I'm riding through a precarious part of town, meaning Midtown traffic. But when I'm riding on secure protected lanes or on the paths that run along the Hudson or through Central Park - no, I don't wear the dreaded helmet then.

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

Facts are simple and facts are straight. Facts are lazy and facts are late. Facts all come with points of view. Facts don't do what I want them to. Facts just twist the truth around. Facts are living turned inside out.

For years we have been taught not to like things. Finally somebody said it was OK to like things. This was a great relief. It was getting hard to go around not liking everything.

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

From what I've heard, Paris did a little bit more prep work as far as making bike lanes and all of that stuff. They really did it properly, which New York is getting to little by little.

Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.

Human beings have the incredible capacity for denial. I think they do. And although it's really hard to believe, I have my doubts. But my feeling is that first they have to convince themselves. First they have to justify this stuff to themselves and if they can do that, even for just the moment that it's coming out their mouth, then they can kind of mouth it with kind of believable sincerity, even if some of us.

I always think the everyday is more relevant than anything too grand because we all have to deal with it.

I am an immigrant with a Green Card and, therefore, I am not eligible to vote in a federal election.

I came to New York to be a fine artist - that was my ambition.

I can't tell one from the other:I find you or you find me?There was a time before we were born If someone asks, this is where I'll be.

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'd been keeping tour diaries, and especially when I go somewhere where I felt the experience might be interesting, like Eastern Europe or South America or whatever, where the whole perception of what I was doing there and stuff that I was seeing and music I was hearing, I could put all that into a diary.

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

I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's bullshit.

I don't care how impossible it seems.

I don't like begging money from producers.

I don't think I have grand visions that I will never achieve.

I don't think people are going to switch over to bikes because it's good for them or because it's politically correct. They're going to do it because it gets them from A to B faster.

If anything, a lot of electronic music is music that no one listens to at home, hardly. It's really only to be heard when everyone's out enjoying it.

If I'm feeling that I have an angle or something to say or something where in a way I'm having a conversation with myself, that's immensely pleasurable.

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

I found music to be the therapy of choice.

...if photos can reproduce the world more perfectly than any painter, can capture an instant, a look, a gesture, then what makes a painting good anymore? Painting subverts this subversion of its traditional nature by redefining itself - art is idea, not simply skillful execution. So, a work can be crudely made, or even machine made - but it has to be practically and functionally useless.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that's beyond the practicality of what I can do.

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 a good story and I also like staring at the sea-- do I have to choose between the two?

I love getting out of my comfort zone.

I love writing. I don't claim to be great at it. Occasionally I get a good sentence off. But I love the activity.