David Byrne

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.

When things get so absurd and so stupid and so ridiculous that you just can't bear it, you cannot help but turn everything into a joke.

I certainly agree that putting everything into little genres is counterproductive. You're not going to get too many surprises if you only focus on the stuff that fits inside the box that you know.

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

Real sadness is such an all-encompassing intense thing that it takes you out of your humdrum existence. If you can still function, you want to show it while it's peaking. So when people tell you to cheer up, it's not always the best thing.

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

We don't make music, it makes us

Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.

All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.

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 wouldn't 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 isn't logical, it's a song.

I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching.

To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.

Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

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

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

I really enjoy forgetting. When I first come to a place, I notice all the little details. I notice the way the sky looks. The color of white paper. The way people walk. Doorknobs. Everything. Then I get used to the place and I don't notice those things anymore. So only by forgetting can I see the place again as it really is.

Work aside, we come to New York for the possibility of interaction and inspiration.

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

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

Often I don't know what the song means until it's finished. Sometimes months later. I don't think that's bad. It implies that I don't know what I'm doing but-I think if you're able to follow your instincts, then that's knowing what you're doing.

I try never to wear my own clothes, I pretend I'm someone else