Top 90 David Bowie Quotes

I don’t like to read things that people write about me. I’d rather read what kids have to say about me because it’s not their profession to do that.

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.

There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

But I’m pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people.

I’m not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it’s the recording or the performance side.

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.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

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.

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.

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

I was never particularly fond of my voice.

I think Mustique is Duchampian – it will always provide an endless source of delight.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

Nearly all the synth work on Heathen is mine and some of the piano.

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

I thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing. And because nobody else was ever doing my songs, I felt – you know, I had to go out and do them.

I’ve started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I’d be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music.

When I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

I’m not one of those guys that has a great worldview. I kind of deal with terror and fear and isolation and abandonment.

Radio in England is nonexistent. It’s very bad English use of a media system, typically English use.

I couldn’t have written things like ‘Low’ and ‘Heroes,’ those particular albums, if it hadn’t have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.

I’m not very articulate.

I don’t have a problem with ageing – in fact, I embrace that aspect of it. And am able to and obviously am going to be able to quite easily… it doesn’t faze me at all.

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.

I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement – it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original.

I guess it’s flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

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.

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‘Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.’

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.

I’m an early riser. I get up between five and six, have coffee, and read for a couple of hours before everyone else gets up.

Age doesn’t bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It’s the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.

An armchair Jungian would say the whole thing is about my own ongoing spiritual search. My interior life has always been one of trying to find a spiritual link, maybe because I’m from a family of separate religious philosophies: Protestant and Catholic.

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.

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

The Americans at heart are a pure and noble people; things to them are in black and white. It’s either ‘rawk’ or it’s not. We Brits putter around in the grey area.

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.

When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

What I like to do is try to make a difference with the work I do.

I find only freedom in the realms of eccentricity.

Tony Visconti and I had been wanting to work together again for a few years now. Both of us had fairly large commitments and for a long time we couldn’t see a space in which we could get anything together.

I think much has been made of this alter ego business. I mean, I actually stopped creating characters in 1975 – for albums, anyway.

What I do is I write mainly about very personal and rather lonely feelings, and I explore them in a different way each time. You know, what I do is not terribly intellectual. I’m a pop singer for Christ‘s sake. As a person, I’m fairly uncomplicated.

Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.

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.

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.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

Being shoved into the top-40 scene was an unusual experience. It was great I’d become accessible to a huge audience but not terribly fulfilling.

I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I’m living on.

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.

I believe that I often bring out the best in somebody’s talents.

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’m very good at what I do, and I don’t turn my hand to something unless I’m very good at it, frankly.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

I wanted to be Gerry Mulligan, only, see, I didn’t have any kind of technique. So I thought, well, baritone sax is kind of easier; I can manage that – except I couldn’t afford a baritone, so I bought an alto, which was the same fingering.

For me, the world that I inhabit in reality is probably a very different world than the one people expect that I would be in.

Frankly, if I could get away with not having to perform, I’d be very happy. It’s not my favorite thing to do.

Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.

I don’t crave applause. I’m not one of those guys who comes alive on stage. I’m much more alive at home, I think.

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

I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs – that’s where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.

I’ve made over 25 studio albums, and I think probably I’ve made two real stinkers in my time, and some not-bad albums, and some really good albums. I’m proud of what I’ve done. In fact it’s been a good ride.

It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.

If I had a talent, it was for looking askew at everything, possibly more than my contemporaries. But I had to really push myself to be a writer.

Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.

GYBE are among my, erm, two favourite Montreal bands, Arcade Fire being the other.

It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‘real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

I don’t see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all inter-relate completely.

I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players.

You would think that a rock star being married to a supermodel would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.

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.

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.

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.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I’m a writer… I write.

The skin of my character in ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth‘ was some concoction, a spermatozoon of an alien nature that was obscene and weird-looking.

The name Zahra was to have been lman’s own name at birth, but a senior member of the family changed it to lman at the last minute.

I would drive to gigs in my tiny little Fiat. I would shoot up and down the M1 to play at various places.

The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic, nihilistic.

Strangely, some songs you really don’t want to write.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

I’m responsible for starting a whole new school of pretension.

It is amazing how a new child can refocus one’s direction seconds after its birth.