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.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
David Bowie reflects on the intertwining of personal anxieties and spiritual quests within his worldview, often expressing these themes through the lens of relationships in his music.
In this quote, David Bowie acknowledges that his experiences with anxiety and spiritual exploration shape his perspective on life. He notes that despite these profound themes, his artistic expression often manifests as relationship-focused songs, highlighting the complexity of human emotions and how they can be intertwined with personal struggles and aspirations.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a mental health awareness event, one might quote Bowie to highlight the importance of expressing personal struggles through art.
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.
I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.
Nothing prepared me for your smile
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.
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.
Similar quotes
I detest the niqab and the burka for their erasure of women and for dangerously equating piety with that disappearance - the less of you I can see, the closer you must be to God.
His overriding life necessity was not love, it was his profession…He had come to medicine not by coincidence or calculation but by a deep inner desire. Insofar as it is possible to divide people into categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one or another lifelong activity. Every Frenchman is different. But all the actors the world over are similar.
To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
An admiral without ships, a hand without fingers, in service of a king without a throne. Is this a knight who comes before us, or the answer to a child's riddle?
But every soil becomes finally exhausted, and the ploughshare of evil must always come once more.
One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.