Quotes from David Byrne

In retrospect, I can see I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

We live in ugly times.

It's not always been a happy marriage. I guess I wanted a quick fix.

Some artists and indie musicians see Spotify fairly positively - as a way of getting noticed, of getting your music out there where folks can hear it risk-free.

Physical contact is a human necessity.

People hear about stuff from their friends or a magazine or a newspaper.

So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don't have names for what they are or haven't identified them all. We can't pinpoint exactly what makes each city's people unique yet.

When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that's not something I could do.

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

Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.

I'm afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn't fit that will become unnecessary.

From what I've heard, Paris did a little bit more prep work as far as making bike lanes and all of that stuff. They really did it properly, which New York is getting to little by little.

It didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they're intended to be used for.

Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

As everything becomes digitized, there's the idea that things that can't be digitized become more valuable.

In a certain way, you get some new tools to work with, but I don't know if it ultimately makes the creative process any easier.

I ride my bike almost every day here in New York. It's getting safer to do so, but I do have to be fairly alert when riding on the streets as opposed to riding on the Hudson River bike path or similar protected lanes.

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.

The city is a body and a mind - a physical structure as well as a repository of ideas and information.

The arts don't exist in isolation.

Probably the reason it's a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you're getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you're going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there's a kind of bundle.

I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it's a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.