David Gilmour Quotes & Sayings

I am in a space now where I can try anything; and with Pink Floyd we've always been in a space where we were able to try out anything. I think we were very young then and we were very keen to experiment and try things out. It seems to me that this sort of experimenting is like working yourself towards something and trying to find what you like and what you want. — David Gilmour

I think I could walk into any music shop anywhere and with a guitar off the rack, a couple of basic pedals and an amp I could sound just like me. There's no devices, customized or otherwise, that give me my sound. — David Gilmour

We already had all the songs, and it turns out all you have to do is burn them to some CDs, so why not? — David Gilmour

It's about the quality of the worry," I said. "I have happier worries now than I used to. — David Gilmour

It's not true that you fall in love only once in your life. But it is true that you only fall in love a certain way, with a certain absoluteness, once. — David Gilmour

The second time you see something is really the first time. You need to know how it ends before you can appreciate how beautifully it's put together from the beginning. — David Gilmour

I am not a technophobe and I am using the latest technology today, some 30-odd years later, and I am really enjoying what some of the new technologies can offer. But at the same time I am always aware that one can get bogged down in that technology and that it can become more than just a method. That's something that you have to be slightly careful of. — David Gilmour

I've been in The Who, I've been in The Beatles and I've been in Pink Floyd! Top that! — David Gilmour

If people would like to come to my concerts I'd love them to come. And if they like the music that I make, I love that too. But I do not make music for other people. I make it to please myself. — David Gilmour

It's not whether God plays dice; it's how God plays dice. — David Gilmour

I just play intuitively and work the same way in the studio. I don't have any magical effects or anything that helps me to get my particular sound. — David Gilmour

She was a stirrer of the pot, a lover of intrigue and distress, a creature who seemed to draw oxygen from the spectacle of people at each other's throat, everybody in a state of upset and talking about her. — David Gilmour

I think a guitar solo is how my emotion is most freely released, because verbal articulation isn't my strongest communication strength. My wife thinks that I should do interviews by listening to the questions and playing the answer on guitar. — David Gilmour

Our music has depth, and attempts philosophical thought and meaning with discussions of infinity, eternity and mortality. There is a line which people cross that turns it into some magical, mystical realm, for which I dont claim responsibility and dont hold any great truck with. — David Gilmour

I don't even think whether I play the blues or not, I just play whatever feels right at the moment. I also will use any gadget or device that I find that helps me achieve the sort of sound on the guitar that I want to get. — David Gilmour

I had a girlfriend once. All we ever talked about was our relationship. That's what we did instead of having one. — David Gilmour

Well, I am David Gilmour, the voice and guitar of Pink Floyd. I have been since I was 21. — David Gilmour

I remember Adrian [Maben, director] had lots of problems with red tape and dealing with stuff. I think we lost two or three days. Maybe those were the days we had to walk around the summit of Vesuvius, and we went around to the sulfur pits where the ground is bubbling. It's near here. It's fantastic. — David Gilmour

Adrian Maben came to us with the idea. And we just thought, "Well, why not?" I don't think any of us thought it would be as well received and last in people's minds for as long as it did. All credit to him. It's his idea [Pink Floyd at Pompeii] and it was great. — David Gilmour

Being a musician, being a person who's playing tours and making records is a part-time thing for me at age. I did it, I lived it and I breathed it every day of my life for 30-odd years and now I am slowing down a little bit. But it does not mean that I am any less intense and dedicated to the work that I am doing now. I have other priorities in life as well. — David Gilmour

No-one can replace Richard Wright - he was my musical partner and my friend. — David Gilmour

When you realize that you have a little germ of an idea that has - I suppose I can only say, has to me - a little taste of magic to it. You have this idea that there are millions, literally, of people listening to it at the same time as you and that little strange telepathy of a feeling that you're sharing something live with all those people. — David Gilmour

The future is deterministic in principle, but not in practice. — David Gilmour

The trick to having a happy life is being good at something. — David Gilmour

You know, once you've had that guitar up so loud on the stage, where you can lean back and volume will stop you from falling backward, that's a hard drug to kick. — David Gilmour

There is irreducible chance in the universe. — David Gilmour

That's the great illusion of travel, of course, the notion that there's somewhere to get to. A place where you can finally say, Ah, I've arrived. (Of course there is no such place. There's only a succession of waitings until you go home.) — David Gilmour

I was never particularly gregarious. I was quite shy, closed in. It's a classic isn't it, your psychiatrist will tell you, that's how I release it, through music. — David Gilmour

I'm not interested in teaching books by women ... Usually at the beginning of the semester a hand shoots up and someone asks why there aren't any women writers in the course. I say I don't love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down the hall. What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth. — David Gilmour

I've never had any religion. I'd prefer it if I did, really. Even as a boy I just couldn't make myself believe. — David Gilmour

When I was given this job I said I would only teach the people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women. — David Gilmour

There's no way out of here. — David Gilmour

Yes, there's a lot of the blues in my playing. — David Gilmour

I am working on current material, a new album, and that is all still my main motivation of going out and working. We haven't gotten rid of all the new stuff in favor of the old. — David Gilmour

I don't like to get too specific about lyrics. It places limitations on them, and spoils the listeners' interpretation. — David Gilmour

God created a system which gave us freewill. — David Gilmour

I actually learned the guitar with the help of a Pete Seeger instructional record when I was 13 or 14. — David Gilmour

I mean that it's all right to go to bed with an asshole but don't ever have a baby with one. — David Gilmour

Everything in moderation - that's what I live by. — David Gilmour

I don't want to be a full-time member of Pink Floyd all my life. — David Gilmour

The idea of going around to somebody else's flat or house and sitting around in a comfy room and having a really good hi-fi system and listening to a whole album all the way through, then chatting for a few minutes, then maybe putting another album on ... does that happen today? — David Gilmour

I mean, I have moments of huge frustration because of my inability to express myself linguistically as clearly as I would like to. — David Gilmour

These days I don't look to other people with the objective of trying to steal their licks, although I've got no objections to stealing them if that seems like a good idea. I'm sure that I'm still influenced by Mark Knopfler and Eddie Van Halen as well ... I can't play like Eddie Van Halen. I wish I could. I sat down to try some of those ideas and can't do it. I don't know if I could ever get any of that stuff together. Sometimes I think I should work at the guitar more. — David Gilmour

Make life an art rather than art from life. — David Gilmour

Where would rock and roll be without feedback? — David Gilmour

I am a lover of all sorts of different music. I love blues and every piece of music that I have listened to has become an influence. — David Gilmour

How much in life is determined, and how much is due to chance? — David Gilmour

My technique is laughable at times. I have developed a style of my own, I suppose, which creeps around. I don't have to have too much technique for it. I've developed the parts of my technique that are useful to me. I'll never be a very fast guitar player. I don't really know what to say about my style. There's always a melodic intent in there. — David Gilmour

Being a solo artist is what I do. It's what I've been doing for the last 20 years and a bit before then. — David Gilmour

The only way artists can do things is to do it for themselves. Trying to second guess what the public wants or likes is kind of a fool's game. — David Gilmour

Really, how much of one's life is made up of these private incidents; how submerged one is. You know, for example, that you will recover from a broken heart, but somehow that piece of information, that factoid, never arrives at the soul or the brain or the nervous system, yes, the nervous system, where it might do some good. But if you know you're going to be all right, why then do you suffer so? To get there. To get where you know you are going to get to anyway. How pathetic, then, to feel about having arrived. I survived, you say. Yes, but what else would you do? No one dies from love. Come, come. — David Gilmour

It is an example of what films can do, how they can slip past your defenses and really break your heart. — David Gilmour

Usually, in the studio, on this sort of thing ... you just go out and have a play over it, and see what comes, and it's usually - mostly - the first take that's the best one, and you find yourself repeating yourself thereafter. — David Gilmour

I think I'm still trying to be experimental on everything I ever do, but it's not as obviously way-out and experimental as what we were. — David Gilmour

It's a magical thing, the guitar. It allows you to be the whole band in one, to play rhythm and melody, sing over the top. And as an instrument for solos, you can bend notes, draw emotional content out of tiny movements, vibratos and tonal things which even a piano can't do. — David Gilmour

I don't have a very disciplined approach to practicing or anything, but I do tend to have a guitar around most of the time, which I strum on most of the day. — David Gilmour

I don't live my life on the road. I'm getting on a bit and there's a lot of other things in my life. Our lovely children and their lives. It's more of a part-time business these days. — David Gilmour

So you're here by yourself?"
"Yes."
"Seems like an odd place to come by yourself."
"I needed to get away."
"Woman trouble? That's another of my father's expressions."
"No, actually. I poisoned my neighbor's dogs."
After a moment she said, "How drunk are you?"
"Quite."
"Is that true?"
"What?"
"That you poisoned your neighbor's dogs."
"I'm afraid it is."
"I have dogs."
"Well, keep them away from me. — David Gilmour

I have no interest in going on a tour to make money without making new product, new art. — David Gilmour

I love singing. I have spent as much of my life trying to improve my singing as I have practising guitar. — David Gilmour

The expectation on me as a solo artist is very different to the audience's expectation of a Pink Floyd show. — David Gilmour

When a woman tells you she's had a dream about you, you know what's going on, don't you? It means she likes you. It's her way of telling you that you're on her mind. Really on her mind. — David Gilmour

But you, your life, it's just starting, it's all ahead of you. It's yours to throw away. — David Gilmour

'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' and 'Wish You Were Here' are standout tracks. 'Comfortably Numb' is another one. 'High Hopes' from 'The Division Bell' is one of my favorite all-time Pink Floyd tracks. 'The Great Gig in the Sky,' 'Echoes,' there's lot of them. — David Gilmour

Syd always gets in there. — David Gilmour

I'm an atheist, and I don't have any belief in an afterlife. You could say that I'm resigned to the fact that this wonderful life that we get here is it. And having hit 60, it's a good time to get resigned to these things and not be too nervous or upset - and enjoy what great times one can have. — David Gilmour

Obviously, they're all a gang of idiots. But, you know ... live and let live. — David Gilmour

I can remember a lot of nights performing in those early years where you felt that you hit some good moments, but a lot of the time you're thinking, "Oh, God, this isn't quite making it." So I think that is what makes you in the end refine your view of things a little bit. — David Gilmour

That's the illusion of stillness. There is no secret. Only the implication of one by its possesor. — David Gilmour

I think Atom Heart Mother was a good thing to have attempted, but I don't really think the attempt comes off that well. — David Gilmour

It's a very tempting thing to try and relive your glory days when you get a little older and you worry that people have forgotten all about you. — David Gilmour

Love affairs that start in blood tend to end up in blood. — David Gilmour

Jimi Hendrix isn't as good as me! — David Gilmour

It's crazy that America gives such a paltry percentage of its GNP to the starving nations. — David Gilmour

I'm English and I am British. I don't know if I feel part of a music scene. Musically, I have as many feelings and affinity with Americans or Canadians, or all sorts of people as I do with English people. — David Gilmour

We mixed the sounds ourselves. If they were going to put the sound back onto our film [Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii.], we wanted to mix it ourselves. — David Gilmour