Quotes by David Byrne

Powerpoint presentations are a kind of theater, a kind of augmented stand-up. Too often its a boring and tedious genre, and audiences are subjected to the bad as well as the good.

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

Its a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesnt 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?

The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror - not the glamour and sophistication the pushers in the tobacco industry try to portray.

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.

My favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food.

Its not always been a happy marriage. I guess I wanted a quick fix.

To some extent I happily dont know what Im doing. I feel that its an artists responsibility to trust that.

I read the NY Times but I dont trust all of it.

Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.

On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the goings-on in ones own town.

You can know or not know how a car runs and still enjoy riding in a car.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

Theres a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: youre self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isnt so easy in a car, and you cant cover as much ground walking.

Im not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.

I dont listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I dont have a car.

Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?

“I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe--but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldnt be surprised if poetry--poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs--is how the world works. The world isnt logical, its a song.”

“I wouldnt be surprised if poetry - poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs - is how the world works. The world isnt logical; its a song.”