Quotes from David Byrne

I don't like begging money from producers.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren't as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you're allowed to fail.

Technology has allowed people to make records really cheap. You can make a record on a laptop.

Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols.

The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has a 'meaning'and each of us is unique.

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don't censor yourself, you end up with what you're most concerned about, but you haven't filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that's pretty much all you can ask.

The physical sensation of gliding with the wind in your face is exhilarating. That automatic activity of pedalling, when you have to be awake but not think too much, allows you to let subconscious thoughts bubble up, and things seem to just sort themselves out. And the adrenaline wakes you up if you weren't properly alert.

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what's going to happen in my life.

Life tends to be an accumulation of a lot of mundane decisions, which often gets ignored.

I don't listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don't have a car.

There's more good music being made now than ever before.

I found music to be the therapy of choice. I guess it is for a lot of people.

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

I wanted to be a secret agent and an astronaut, preferably at the same time.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?

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

I've rarely kept my distance from kind of - I don't know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, 'Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.'

Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.

I'm guarded; I don't talk much.

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.

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