Quotes from David Byrne

I can't tell one from the other:I find you or you find me?There was a time before we were born If someone asks, this is where I'll be.

I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously.

There's something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There's something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context.

Well, Marx is having a comeback. I hear him mentioned a lot in terms of the global financial situation and the general sense of injustice out there. A lot of economic experts in America refer to him without actually using the M word, but he's around.

The Heads were the only band on that scene that had a groove.

One knew in advance that life in New York would not be easy, but there were cheap rents in cold-water lofts without heat, and the excitement of being here made up for those hardships. I didn't move to New York to make a fortune.

Cycling can be lonely, but in a good way. It gives you a moment to breathe and think, and get away from what you're working on.

Suburban houses and tin sheds are often the objects of ridicule.

The wage for most musicians is a modest amount, and that includes me some of the time.

I try to write about small things. Paper, animals, a house... love is kind of big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp.

I resent the implication that I'm less of a musician and a worse person for not appreciating certain works.

That's the one for my tombstone... Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?

In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist's creativity comes from torment. Once that's fixed, what do you draw on?

When you fall in love, you feel like a missing piece of a puzzle that's been found.

I love writing. I don't claim to be great at it. Occasionally I get a good sentence off. But I love the activity.

People in Latin America... love America from afar and emulate America in some ways but also hate a lot of things that America does to them.

I always think the everyday is more relevant than anything too grand because we all have to deal with it.

I'm proud of 'Stop Making Sense,' but it's a little bit of an albatross; I can't compete with it, but I can't ignore it either.

Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don't sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck.

Frank Lloyd Wright... his things were beautiful but not very functional.

Rich people will travel great distances to look at poor people.

We're on a road to nowhere, come on inside. Takin' that ride to nowhere, we'll take that ride. I'm feelin' okay this mornin', and you know, we're on the road to paradise, here we go, here we go.