David Bowie Quotes & Sayings

I made a more mature approach to industrial music. — David Bowie

I'm very shy. That's probably one of the reasons I got so heavily into drugs. — David Bowie

What I like to do is try to make a difference with the work I do. — David Bowie

You've got your mother in a whirl, she's not sure if your a boy or a girl. — David Bowie

[David] Bowie had a genius for continual change himself, reinventing his sound and his image throughout the decades. Each album seemed to find Bowie in a different persona, with a new sound to match his new look. — David Bowie

People are so fucking dumb. Nobody reads anymore, nobody goes out and looks and explores the society and culture they were brought up in. People have attention spans of five seconds and as much depth as a glass of water. — David Bowie

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

Look out my window, what do I see?
A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me.
All the nightmares came today
And it looks as though they're here to stay. — David Bowie

I don't expect the human race to progress in too many areas. However, having a child with an ear infection makes one hugely grateful for antibiotics. — David Bowie

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 Bowie

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

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

I feel that what I do is always contemporary with the society I'm living in ... If I wanted to explain myself, that's how I'd explain myself: that I'm a diarist. — David Bowie

There's a thing that just as you go to sleep, if you keep your elbows elevated that you will never go below the dream stage. And I've used that quite a lot and it keeps me dreaming much longer than if I just relaxed. — David Bowie

If we could be heroes, if just for one day. — David Bowie

Bully for you, chilly for me, got to get a raincheck on pain. — David Bowie

See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads. — David Bowie

The only art I'll ever study is stuff that I can steal from. — David Bowie

I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music. — David Bowie

You go through stages where you wonder whether you are Christ, or just looking for him. — David Bowie

And I don't care what anybody says; I like doing it, and it's what I shall continue to do — David Bowie

GYBE are among my, erm, two favourite Montreal bands, Arcade Fire being the other. — David Bowie

A lot of people that I know are bugged with the idea that they have got to have an audience, or they have got to be liked. I think the more that you fall into that trap it makes your own life harder to come to terms with, because an audience appreciation is only going to be periodic at the best of times. — David Bowie

I have someone who loves me for me. Seriously, it REALLY helps! — David Bowie

In order to look special wearing the chancy unique; it must be worn with your persona, and if the two don't blend, then the look becomes pear-shaped. — David Bowie

I don't live for the stage. I don't live for an audience. — David Bowie

I hate albums that are really happy. When I am really happy, I don't like to hear happy albums, and when I am really sad I don't wanna hear happy albums ... and I tend to gravitate towards the lonely and isolated anyway when I write. — David Bowie

When I looked in her eyes they were blue but nobody home. — David Bowie

Cause I'd rather stay here
With all the madmen
Than perish with the sadmen roaming free
And I'd rather play here
With all the madmen
For I'm quite content they're all as sane
As me — David Bowie

Some of us, I think, us small, pompous arty ones probably read too much George Steiner and kind of got the idea that we were entering to this kind of post-culture age and that we'd better do something postmodernist - quickly, before somebody else did. — David Bowie

Fame, what you like is in the Limo. Fame, what you get is no tomorrow. — David Bowie

I'm not at ease with the word "love." — David Bowie

I'm wary of the word glam because I think that became the all-inclusive term with for any bloke with lipstick on, which is fine, you know, and that's what it is when it comes down to the public level. — David Bowie

People look to me to see what the spirit of the Seventies is. — David Bowie

Funk, I don't think I have anything to do with funk. I've never considered myself funky. — David Bowie

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

Trying to tart the rock business up a bit is getting nearer to what the kids themselves are like, because what I find, if you want to talk in the terms of rock, a lot depends on sensationalism and the kids are a lot more sensational than the stars themselves. — David Bowie

Everything we look at and choose is some way of expressing how we want to be perceived. — David Bowie

Nothing prepared me for your smile — David Bowie

Even though I was very shy, I found I could get onstage if I had a new identity. — David Bowie

Is it Nice in your snowstorm- freezing your brain? Do you think that your face looks the same? — David Bowie

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

[David] Bowie went on to make best-selling music - funk, dance music, electronic music, while also being influenced by cabaret and jazz. — David Bowie

I can see light at the end of the tunnel and it isn't a train. — David Bowie

Make the best of every moment. We're not evolving. We're not going anywhere. — David Bowie

I'm looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I play everybody. — David Bowie

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

Radio in England is nonexistent. It's very bad English use of a media system, typically English use. — David Bowie

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

In fact, in Europe, I'm more kind of this bloke what writes lots of stuff. — David Bowie

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

I'm not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it's the recording or the performance side. — David Bowie

Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming — David Bowie

I never really felt like a rock singer or a rock star or whatever. — David Bowie

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing. — David Bowie

People are always throwing things at me that I've said and I say that I didn't mean anything. — David Bowie

You can neither win nor lose if you don't run the race — David Bowie

I'm a thinker not a talker. — David Bowie

I was told that it was cool to fall in love, and that period was nothing like that to me. I gave too much of my time and energy to another person and they did the same to me and we started burning out against each other. And that is what is termed love ... — David Bowie

I think the only music I didn't listen to was country and western, and that holds to this day. — David Bowie

Gentleness clears the soul
Love cleans the mind
And makes it Free. — David Bowie

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

You know, I don't feel fifty. I feel not a day over forty-nine. It's incredible. I'm bouncy, I feel bouncy. — David Bowie

I'll ruin everything you are, I'll give you television. — David Bowie

I surrounded myself with people who indulged my ego. They treated me as though I was Ziggy Stardust or one of my characters, never realising that David Jones might be behind it. — David Bowie

It's always time to question what has become standard and established. — David Bowie

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

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

Every time I've made a radical change it's helped me feel buoyant as an artist — David Bowie

Hear this Robert Zimmerman, I wrote a song for you, about a strange young man called Dylan with a voice like sand and glue. — David Bowie

And when the clothes are strewn, don't be afraid of the room, touch the fullness of her breast, feel the love of her caress ... she will be your living end. — David Bowie

I'm still younger than Jagger ... Most people are. — David Bowie

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire. — David Bowie

One day I realized that I really needed to stop losing myself in my work and in my addictions. What happens is you just wake up one morning and feel absolutely dead. You can't even drag your soul back into your body. You feel you have negated everything that is wonderful about life. When you have fallen that far, it feels like a miracle when you regain your love of life. That's when you can begin really looking for a relationship. When you can appreciate the whole concept of giving to someone, not just taking. — David Bowie

I'm an instant atar. Just add Ester and stir. — David Bowie

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding. — David Bowie

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

If it works, it's out of date. — David Bowie

People don't get a chance to think, "Why am I a consumer?" Because the decisions come at them so fast and furiously, they're not [even] given time to think, I am a consumer. — David Bowie

I'm a born librarian with a sex drive — David Bowie

It would be positively boring if minds were in tune. — David Bowie

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

I've never responded well to entrenched negative thinking. — David Bowie

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

The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years. — David Bowie

I'm quite certain that the audience that I've got for my stuff don't listen to the lyrics. — David Bowie

Look up here, I'm in heaven!
I've got scars that can't be seen
I've got drama, can't be stolen,
Everybody knows me now
( ... )
This way or no way
You know I'll be free
Just like that bluebird
Now, ain't that just like me? — David Bowie

I believe in Beatles, I believe my little soul has grown. — David Bowie

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

The public, obviously, they takes things in a very simplest fashion and so they should. That's why we have such wonderful television. — David Bowie

I rate Morrissey (Steven Patrick Morrissey) as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he's up there with Bryan Ferry. — David Bowie

Church on time, makes me party. — David Bowie

When I'm stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic. — David Bowie

Lou Reed is the most important definitive writer in modern rock. Not because of the stuff that he does, but the direction that he will take it. — David Bowie

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

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

I'd rather stay here with all the madmen than perish with the sadmen roaming free. — David Bowie

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

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.
David Bowie — David Bowie

I would like to believe that people knew what they were fighting for and why they wanted a revolution, and exactly what it was within that they didn't like. — David Bowie