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Top David Byrne Quotes

Browse top 38 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by David Byrne.

Favorite David Byrne Quotes

1. "Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects. When everything is visible and appears to be dumb, that's when the details take on larger meanings." ~ David Byrne
2. "years agoI was an angry young manI'd pretendthat I was a billboardstanding tallby the side of the roadI fell in lovewith the beautiful highway" ~ David Byrne
3. "It was rumored that the length of the CD was determined by the duration of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, because that was Norio Ohga's favorite piece of music, and he was the president of Sony at the time. Philips had designed a CD with an 11.5 cm diameter, but Ohga insisted that a disc must be able to hold the entire Beethoven recording. The longest recording of the symphony in Polygram's archive was 74 minutes, so the CD size was increased to 12 cm diameter to accommodate the extra data." ~ David Byrne
4. "Some of you people just about missed it" ~ David Byrne
5. "I pick up a copy of Newsweek on the plane and immediately notice how biased, slanted, and opinionated all the U.S. newsmagazine articles are. Not that the Euro and British press aren't biased as well--they certainly are--but living in the United States we are led to believe, and are constantly reminded, that our press is fair and free of bias. After such a short time away, I am shocked at how obviously and blatantly this lie is revealed--there is the 'reporting' that is essentially parroting what the White House press secretary announces; the myriad built-in assumptions that one ceases to register after being somewhere else for a while. The myth of neutrality is an effective blanket for a host of biases." ~ David Byrne
6. "Music isn't fragile." ~ David Byrne
7. "All that interconnectedness that facilitated much of the explosion of megawealth over the last decade also facilitated the interpenetration of everything, so no one or no building is truly isolated and 'safe' anymore. Safety is in getting along. (p.261)" ~ David Byrne
8. "As music becomes less of a thing--a cylinder, a cassette, a disc--and more ephemeral, perhaps we will begin to assign an increasing value to live performances again." ~ David Byrne
9. "Maybe this is all a bit of a myth, a willful desire to give each place its own unique aura. But doesn't any collective belief eventually become a kind of truth? If enough people act as if something is true, isn't it indeed "true," not objectively, but in the sense that it will determine how they will behave? The myth of unique urban character and unique sensibilities in different cities exists because we want it to exist." ~ David Byrne
10. "Stop making sense" ~ David Byrne
11. "My favorite term for a new kind of performance is "security theater." In this genre, we watch as ritualized inspections and patdowns create the illusion of security. It's a form that has become common since 9/11, and even the government agencies that participate in this activity acknowledge,off the record, that it is indeed a species of theater." ~ David Byrne
12. "But at times words can be a dangerous addition to music — they can pin it down. Words imply that the music is about what the words say, literally, and nothing more. If done poorly, they can destroy the pleasant ambiguity that constitutes much of the reason we love music. That ambiguity allows listeners to psychologically tailor a song to suit their needs, sensibilities, and situations, but words can limit that, too. There are plenty of beautiful tracks that I can't listen to because they've been "ruined" by bad words — my own and others. In Beyonce's song "Irreplaceable," she rhymes "minute" with "minute," and I cringe every time I hear it (partly because by that point I'm singing along). On my own song "Astronaut," I wrap up with the line "feel like I'm an astronaut," which seems like the dumbest metaphor for alienation ever. Ugh." ~ David Byrne
13. "The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has a 'meaning'and each of us is unique." ~ David Byrne
14. "Creative work is more accurately a machine that digs down and finds stuff, emotional stuff that will someday be raw material that can be used to produce more stuff, stuff like itself - clay to be available for future use." ~ David Byrne
15. "You may say to yourself: "Well, how did I get here?" ~ David Byrne
16. "Living "in" a story, being part of a narrative, is much more satisfying than living without one. I don't always know what narrative it is, because I'm living my life and not always reflecting on it, but as I edit these pages I am aware that I have an urge to see my sometimes random wandering as having a plot, a purpose guided by some underlying story." ~ David Byrne
17. "For years we have been taught not to like things. Finally somebody said it was OK to like things. This was a great relief. It was getting hard to go around not liking everything." ~ David Byrne
18. "A history of nightlife!--what an interesting concept. A history of a people, told not through their daily travails and successive political upheavals, but via the changes in their nightly celebrations and unwindings. History is, in this telling, accompanied by a bottle of Malbec, some fine Argentine steak, tango music, dancing, and gossip. It unfolds through and alongside illicit activities that take place in the multitude of discos, dance parlors, and clubs. Its direction, the way people live, is determined on half-lit streets, in bars, and in smoky late-night restaurants. This history is inscribed in songs, on menus, via half-remembered conversations, love affairs, drunken fights, and years of drug abuse." ~ David Byrne
19. "It can often seem that those in power don't want us to enjoy making things for ourselves - they'd prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation." ~ David Byrne
20. "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." ~ David Byrne
21. "I'm no Lance Armstrong, but I do use a bike to get from place to place in Manhattan, a little bit of Brooklyn." ~ David Byrne
22. "Suburban houses and tin sheds are often the objects of ridicule." ~ David Byrne
23. "Analysis is like a lobotomy. Who wants to have all their edges shaved off?" ~ David Byrne
24. "I wanted to be a secret agent and an astronaut, preferably at the same time." ~ David Byrne
25. "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." ~ David Byrne
26. "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." ~ David Byrne
27. "The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror - not the glamour and sophistication the pushers in the tobacco industry try to portray." ~ David Byrne
28. "To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware." ~ David Byrne
29. "Cycling is a joy and faster than many other modes of transport, depending on the time of day. It clears the head." ~ David Byrne
30. "Yeah, it's pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days." ~ David Byrne
31. "I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass." ~ David Byrne
32. "I'm very much into making lists and breaking things apart into categories." ~ David Byrne
33. "My favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food." ~ David Byrne
34. "That's the one for my tombstone... Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?" ~ David Byrne
35. "The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood - rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky - they all turn out in one day." ~ David Byrne
36. "To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that." ~ David Byrne
37. "We live in ugly times." ~ David Byrne
38. "Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively." ~ David Byrne

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Today's Quote

Santas vacas locas bebés. ¡Eso fue súperformidable!"
Author: Becca Ann

What Did David Byrne Talk About?

Thin
Use
Lit
Ally
Wit
Ear
Lie
Hey
King
Ears
Ten
Con
Era
Sin
Ring
Place
Tan
Son
Cause
Times
Here
Term
Song
Year
Tie
Body
Sign
Side
She
Along
Bee
Determine
Able
Favor
Favorite
Hen
Making
Mine
Old
Seem
Self
Act

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