David Bowie Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best David Bowie Quotes. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!

1
I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part.
David Bowie
2
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.
David Bowie
3
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.
David Bowie
4
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.
David Bowie
5
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.
David Bowie
6
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.’
David Bowie
7
When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.
David Bowie
8
I re-invented my image so many times that I’m in denial that I was originally an overweight Korean woman.
David Bowie
9
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.
David Bowie
10
I’m not very articulate.
David Bowie
11
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.
David Bowie
12
When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.
David Bowie
13
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.
David Bowie
14
I’m wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It’s a real enjoyment.
David Bowie
15
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.
David Bowie
16
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.
David Bowie
17
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.
David Bowie
18
Strangely, some songs you really don’t want to write.
David Bowie
19
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.
David Bowie
20
Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that – that sense of reinvention. Kids learned that however crazy you may think it is, there is a place for what you want to do and who you want to be.
David Bowie
21
I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.
David Bowie
22
I change my mind a lot. I usually don’t agree with what I say very much. I’m an awful liar.
David Bowie
23
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.
David Bowie
24
All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.
David Bowie
25
I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.
David Bowie
26
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.
David Bowie
27
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.
David Bowie
28
I feel confident imposing change on myself. It’s a lot more fun progressing than looking back. That’s why I need to throw curve balls.
David Bowie
29
I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he’s up there with Bryan Ferry.
David Bowie
30
Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.
David Bowie
31
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.
David Bowie
32
Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.
David Bowie
33
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.
David Bowie
34
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.
David Bowie
35
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.
David Bowie
36
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.
David Bowie
37
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.
David Bowie
38
From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.
David Bowie
39
Funk, I don’t think I have anything to do with funk. I’ve never considered myself funky.
David Bowie
40
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.
David Bowie
41
Being a hybrid maker off and on over the years, I’m very comfortable with the idea and have been the subject of quite a few pretty good mash-ups myself.
David Bowie
42
I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players.
David Bowie
43
Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.
David Bowie
44
As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.
David Bowie
45
I find only freedom in the realms of eccentricity.
David Bowie
46
I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.
David Bowie
47
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.
David Bowie
48
I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.
David Bowie
49
I have all the admiration in the world for somebody like Bono, who really puts himself on the line and tries actively to do something about our world situation.
David Bowie
50
I would drive to gigs in my tiny little Fiat. I would shoot up and down the M1 to play at various places.
David Bowie
51
The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.
David Bowie
52
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.
David Bowie
53
I’ll tell you who I absolutely adore: Ian McEwan.
David Bowie
54
I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.
David Bowie
55
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.
David Bowie
56
I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me.
David Bowie
57
Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.
David Bowie
58
I’m always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don’t even take what I am seriously.
David Bowie
59
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.
David Bowie
60
The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic, nihilistic.
David Bowie
61
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.
David Bowie
62
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.
David Bowie
63
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.
David Bowie
64
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.
David Bowie
65
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.
David Bowie
66
Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties.
David Bowie
67
Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.
David Bowie
68
I was never particularly fond of my voice.
David Bowie
69
As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?
David Bowie
70
That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.
David Bowie
71
I think Mustique is Duchampian – it will always provide an endless source of delight.
David Bowie
72
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.
David Bowie
73
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.
David Bowie
74
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.
David Bowie
75
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.
David Bowie
76
I guess it’s flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.
David Bowie
77
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.
David Bowie
78
But I’m pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people.
David Bowie
79
I’ve always regretted that I never was able to talk openly with my parents, especially with my father. I’ve heard and read so many things about my family that I can no longer believe anything; every relative I question has a completely different story from the last.
David Bowie
80
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.
David Bowie
81
I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.
David Bowie
82
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.
David Bowie
83
On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.
David Bowie
84
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.
David Bowie
85
But I’ve got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album’s worth of work as his legacy. That’s all that life allowed him.
David Bowie
86
I don’t see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all inter-relate completely.
David Bowie
87
Frankly, if I could get away with not having to perform, I’d be very happy. It’s not my favorite thing to do.
David Bowie
88
GYBE are among my, erm, two favourite Montreal bands, Arcade Fire being the other.
David Bowie
89
From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.
David Bowie
90
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.
David Bowie
91
It is amazing how a new child can refocus one’s direction seconds after its birth.
David Bowie
92
I think much has been made of this alter ego business. I mean, I actually stopped creating characters in 1975 – for albums, anyway.
David Bowie
93
To not be modest about it, you’ll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I’ve worked with have done their best work by far with me.
David Bowie
94
Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.
David Bowie
95
I’m responsible for starting a whole new school of pretension.
David Bowie
96
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.
David Bowie
97
There’s a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I’m affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn’t want to leave. He likes it very much.
David Bowie
98
I’m an instant star. Just add water and stir.
David Bowie
99
Fame itself… doesn’t really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant.
David Bowie
100
Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.
David Bowie
101
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.
David Bowie
102
Nearly all the synth work on Heathen is mine and some of the piano.
David Bowie
103
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.
David Bowie
104
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.
David Bowie
105
When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.
David Bowie