Best 318 quotes of David Bowie on MyQuotes

1961 was when I was really into clothes. I left school at 15 and started copying a bloke who used to go up on the train to London with me; Leslie, I think his name was. He was like, top mod of his own area. He wore Italian jackets with white linen jeans. Boy, was that cool! I mean, that's in style now - it's very much the L.A. look. But he was wearing it then, and it looked supercool.

Actually, my ambition at eight or nine years old was to be one of Little Richard's sax players, and that's when I got my first saxophone, a Selmer. It was a strange Bakelite material - that creamy plastic with all the gold keys on it. I had to get a job as a butcher's delivery boy to start paying for it.

All art is unstable. Its meaning is not necessarily that implied by the author. There is no authoritative voice. There are only multiple readings.

All the great mystical religions put a strong emphasis on the redeeming qualities of sex.

A lot of people provide me with quotes. They suggest all kinds of things to say and I do, really, because I'm not very hip at all.

A lot of people that I know are bugged with the idea that they have got to have an audience, or they have got to be liked. I think the more that you fall into that trap it makes your own life harder to come to terms with, because an audience appreciation is only going to be periodic at the best of times.

Always drawn to the theatric, Bowie also performed in stage productions of "The Elephant Man" and just recently collaborated on "Lazarus," an off-Broadway musical that's a sequel to his 1976 role in the film "The Man Who Fell To Earth.

Am I Machiavellian? I don't think I'm quite the mastermind people would have me be. Everything I do tends to be very successful and it may have something to do with the fact that I'm very good, not necessarily that I manipulate. But that doesn't often occur to people.

A mutual friend knew that we were both [with Iman Abdulmajid] on our own, with broken marriages and with children. We were brought to dinner one night. . . . It was absolutely instantaneous. I couldn't get her out of my mind . . . sleepless nights - real 18-year-old stuff.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

And I think my spaceship knows which way to go.

And it's always the same kind of artist, I think, who has more enjoyment being slightly on the outside of things, who doesn't want to be sucked into the tyranny of the mainstream. Because once you get sucked into that, you're dead as an artist.

And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds are immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of what they're going through.

And you, You can be mean And I, I'll drink all the time 'Cause we're lovers, And that is a fact Yes we're lovers, And that is that

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle. The rock stars have assimilated all kinds of philosophies, styles, histories, writings, and they throw out what they have gleaned from that.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I've got left?

At no point did I ever doubt I would be as near as anybody could be to England's Elvis Presley. Even from eight or nine years old, I thought, Well, I'll be the greatest rock star in England. I just made up my mind.

Bully for you, chilly for me, got to get a raincheck on pain.

But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him.

Capitalism can be alright, I mean Karl Marx didn't live to see what Roosevelt did with that Depression. He pulled everybody out of that Depression and everybody hated Franklin Roosevelt. He got into office four times. One after the other, with everybody saying, he can't get in again. Everybody voted for Roosevelt four times and he did a hell of a lot.

Church on time, makes me party.

Comfort comes into your house first as guest, then as a host, then finally as the master.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.

Critics I don't understand. They get too intellectual. They're not very well-versed in street talk; it takes them longer to say it. So they have to do it in dictionaries and they take longer to say it.

[David] Bowie had a genius for continual change himself, reinventing his sound and his image throughout the decades. Each album seemed to find Bowie in a different persona, with a new sound to match his new look.

David Bowie emerged as a rock star in the late '60s. And as Ken Tucker wrote, "In the face of the hippy era's sincerity, intimacy and generosity, Bowie presented irony, distance and self-absorption. His song 'Changes' announced the arrival of a new counterculture," unquote.

[David] Bowie's last album "Blackstar" featured him backed by a jazz quartet.

[David] Bowie went on to make best-selling music - funk, dance music, electronic music, while also being influenced by cabaret and jazz.

Don't let me hear you say life takes you nowhere, angel.

Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.

Elvis is English, and climbs the hills. Can't tell the bullshit from the lies.

Every time I've made a radical change it's helped me feel buoyant as an artist

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.

Fame puts you there where things are hollow.

Fame, what you like is in the Limo. Fame, what you get is no tomorrow.

Feeling so gay, feeling so gay.

For here Am I sitting in a tin can, Far above the world. Planet Earth is blue, And there's nothing I can do.

For here, am I sitting in a tin can, far above the world. Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do... Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still - and I think my spaceship knows which way to go. Tell my wife I love her very much.

For me a chameleon is something that disguises itself to look as much like its environment as possible. I always thought I did exactly the opposite of that.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I've seen on some of the songs that I've written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

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

Ground control to Major Tom.

Having not really written any generational songs - I think maybe two or three of the songs that I've ever written have any bearing on the age of the listener. My stuff tends to be far more concerned with the spiritual and with subjects like isolation and being miserable.

Hear this Robert Zimmerman, I wrote a song for you, about a strange young man called Dylan with a voice like sand and glue.

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.

He says he's a beautician and sells you nutrition, and keeps all your dead hair for making underwear.

Hey man, I gotta straighten my face. This mellow thighed chick just put my spine out of place.

However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

I always had a repulsive sort of need to be something more than human.

I always write well in New York.