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 BowieRead
As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn.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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the struggles of overcoming shyness and fear of judgment, illustrating the courage it takes to express oneself.
David Bowie's quote reveals the internal battle he faced during his adolescence with shyness and a fear of performing in front of others. He chose to express his creativity through disguise, highlighting how fear can inhibit personal expression, yet also the lengths one might go to protect oneself from humiliation while still finding a way to share their talent with the world.
Themes
ShynessCourageSelf-ExpressionMusicPerformance
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can inspire young artists struggling to share their work publicly.
More from David Bowie
All quotes →I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer... I write.
David BowieRead
I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.
David BowieRead
Nothing prepared me for your smile
David BowieRead
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 BowieRead
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 BowieRead
Similar quotes
They said we were soft, that we would not fight, that we could not win. We are not a warlike nation. We do not go to war for gain or for territory; we go to war for principles, and we produce young men like these. I think I told every one of them that I would rather have that medal, the Congressional Medal of Honor, than to be President of the United States.
Harry S. TrumanRead
We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.
Annie ProulxRead
For each of us as women, there is a dark place within, where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, beautiful and tough as chestnut stanchions against our nightmare of weakness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling
Audre LordeRead
Right out of high school I never had the fear of getting beat, which is how most people lose.
Dan GableRead
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy... In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read
We may forget, or be unaware of, how prevalent it is to be sexually traumatized by events that are generally not thought of as traumatizing.
Peter A. LevineRead