Top 60 Devendra Banhart Quotes

Pay attention to your breathing.

Personally speaking, Canada is becoming more and more beguiling and mysterious and I feel as though I really need to explore it.

I love almost every Britpop band.

I’ve always thought it’d be nice to be seaweed, kind of just floating about.

I’m interested in Qawwali and the blues.

One not-to-be-mentioned major said they would sign me if I worked with a team of songwriters to help me finish songs, ha! Of course, in hindsight, I should‘ve done it just to see what that would have been like.

My interested in Brazilian music stemmed from wanting to find a musical identity other than the salsa and meringue that I was inundated with in Venezuela as a child.

Green is one of my favorite colors.

We all have our vices, you know. One of my vices is ice cream.

I’m just trying to make rent and do my work.

I’m deeply conservative and I’m profoundly boring.

I might have some delusions of grandeur.

If you’re ever wondering what to wear, just dress like a pumpkin, you’re good to go.

Something I practice everyday is Tonglin. It’s Tibetan for taking and receiving.

I’ve been doing visual stuff for as long as I’ve been making records; in fact, for longer.

I know that there are energies that vibrate frequencies that are so subtle you could say that they exist in a different territory or realm or sphere, and people mistake these frequencies for ghosts.

I try to listen to as much as possible. I know some people really try to avoid music when they’re writing and recording, but I am very inspired by so many different musicians, and I need to learn.

My number-one hero in terms of interdisciplinary art is Laurie Anderson, but I’ve always admired anyone who can think way beyond any one medium.

No one’s fearless. We’re all full of fear. But can your fear guide you or lean into it, embrace it.

Well, love is a difficult thing to hold on to. It’s a slippery little beast. It will hold you and then it will elude you at any moment.

Leigh Bowery is a legend. Everybody loves Leigh Bowery. Everybody should love Leigh Bowery.

As I get older, there’s this new realisation and it’s almost like a relief, and that is that I can never be who I once was, but only who I want to become.

At some point in your life, if you live in Venezuela, you come across or own a cuatro. Either at school, either at camp, either at a friend‘s house, at a birthday or Christmas or bar mitzvah, you end up with a cuatro. It’s like a must.

Well I am a Gemini.

I aspire to feel like a child, how about that!

For a long time, soul music was maybe one of my favorite kinds of music.

I don’t ever think of myself as a dark person or a ruined person in any way. I just feel happy to be alive, and to be able to love.

I grew up around so much new agey stuff. Part of me takes it lightly because I’m so used to it. It was my parents. It wasn’t some path I discovered and want to share with people. It’s just been a very natural part of my life. There’s humor to it and there’s seriousness to it, too.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a friend tell me, in this tender and discreet voice, ‘It’s just you and me bro, and I want to tell you the truth: make a record of you and an acoustic guitar. Please. That’s what everybody actually likes.’ That’s so funny to me.

In the next life what would my career be? Oh, easy. Dried persimmon dealer.

When the Internet came along, the first thing I did was look up Wu-Tang so I could print out their symbol and glue it onto my skateboard.

I’m very lucky my parents were into different kinds of music.

John Cage is someone I got into as a visual artist, before I even knew his music. I don’t think a lot of people even know that he does visual art.

It’s all about sensitivity. If you have sensitivity then mysticism will be part of your life.

Let’s take fashion seriously, but not ourselves so seriously. Or reverse that, maybe don’t take fashion so seriously, but take yourself seriously. Actually, don’t take yourself seriously, that’s for sure. So, yeah, take fashion seriously, just not yourself.

I like California a lot. There’s a lot of space, but it’s actually the most populated place in the nation.

I’m getting older and I’m just coming to terms that I’m stuck with me so I better try to like myself.

Dad had four world records, and they happened to be Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ali Farka Toure. I tried singing like these people, and it didn’t work.

I meditate.’ That’s like saying ‘I eat.’ Think of all the food there is! And there are almost as many varieties of mediation.

The first paid show was in Los Angeles at an art opening and I was paid maybe, I don’t know, twenty five bucks?

The only real moment is now.

I was born in Texas, you know. I was born in Houston.

I come from a school of artists, the Mission School in San Francisco, and there are a lot of artists I look up to.

I sit around and try to play along to certain songs that I really love. It helps you explore new territory.

It’s embarrassing to quote Gandhi or something, but being the change you want to see in the world is pretty powerful.

The real hippie is trying to create something inclusive, something holistic, something loving and healthy which isn’t in perpetual conflict with authority and actually knows that the only way to disarm the entire game is to step aside and not take any sides.

It’s very powerful to shut down your computer and escape into the real world.

I do have very small handwriting.

I love Oasis.

Coming to Canada, I’d really like to see Sasquatch.

Basho is the great poet of Japan, writing in the second half of the 17th century, but his work is still incredibly fresh.

Grizzly Bear‘s ‘Knife‘ is one of the best videos of all time – everything Encyclopedia Pictura has done is really incredible.

I remember when I was a kid I thought I could either be an athletic water drinker, like an Olympic-level water drinker, or I could invent Windex. Which I thought was really smart, because it already existed.

Whether I’m on a major or an indie, I don’t think this is important, but at the same time I do.

Good art doesn’t really have an expiration date on it.

Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, the ubiquitous music is salsa, cumbia, merengue, a little bit of samba.

A soul singer is always singing to their crowd. They’re always singing about their woes to you. And I really appreciate that when a singer is making you feel… when they’re directing it at me. When they’re including me.

I support things that are very close to my heart: mostly LGBTQ rights.

Canada has really grown and grown as this unexplored and very mysterious and exotic place to me.

I guess I don’t want everyone to know what I’m doing every second.