Best Of Talking Heads Quotes & Sayings

I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk. — Dean Wareham

Euro currency to dissolve due to sovereign debt crisis," the talking heads grimly proclaimed. — L. Todd Wood

I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind that become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters. — Robert Penn Warren

I think the idea of having the show divided into two parts was that Tom Tom Club opened for Talking Heads in Europe, and it was the best we'd ever had as an opening act. — Tina Weymouth

A Knock On The Door

They ask me if I've ever thought about the end of
the world, and I say, "Come in, come in, let me
give you some lunch, for God's sake." After a few
bites it's the afterlife they want to talk about.
"Ouch," I say, "did you see that grape leaf
skeletonizer?" Then they're talking about
redemption and the chosen few sitting right by
His side. "Doing what?" I ask. "Just sitting?" I
am surrounded by burned up zombies. "Let's
have some lemon chiffon pie I bought yesterday
at the 3 Dog Bakery." But they want to talk about
my soul. I'm getting drowsy and see butterflies
everywhere. "Would you gentlemen like to take a
nap, I know I would." They stand and back away
from me, out the door, walking toward my
neighbors, a black cloud over their heads and
they see nothing without end. — James Tate

Patience is a virtue but I don't have the time. — David Byrne

But since death is inevitable we don't have to deal with it (it'll deal with us when it decides to). What we do have to deal with is the psychic, physical, and fusion diseases wrought during our so-called lives as byproducts of the elemental clash. In other words we're all terminally psychotic and no doctor, hospital, pill, needle, book or guru holds the cure. Because the disease is called life and there is no cure for that but death and death's just part of the set-up designed to keep you terrified and thus in bondage from the cradle to the crypt so ha ha the joke's on you except there's no punchline and the comedian forgot you ever existed as even a comma. — Lester Bangs

I don't care how impossible it seems. — David Byrne

My ears perked up like a dog's again when she spoke and pointed in the general direction of the chick that smelled of Slim Jims.
I hope I don't start barking.
"Oh, please, like she doesn't know about the smell of meat products wafting from her lady parts. I think she rubs bologna down there to attract men. Lunch meat is her sex pheromone."
The brunette shook her head in irritation. "If I do a shot, will you please stop talking about Jade's disgusting vagina and never, ever use the word meat product in a sentence?"
"Woof!"
Three sets of eyes all turned to look at me.
"Did I just bark out loud?"
Three heads bobbed up and down in unison. — Tara Sivec

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way. The reason for ensuring that that privileged arena is preserved is not that writers want the absolute freedom to say and do whatever they please. It is that we, all of us, readers and writers and citizens and generals and goodmen, need that little, unimportant-looking room. We do not need to call it sacred, but we do need to remember that it is necessary — Salman Rushdie

By the time Talking Heads were starting, my feeling was to throw out everything and start from scratch onstage; strip it down to as close to zero as you can get and then you can make it yours. — David Byrne

say something once,
why say it again? — Talking Heads

Thoreau wrote, "the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation." This is as true today as it was back then. How many men stand on a balcony and wonder what happened?... He wanted adventure and he got two weeks' vacation. He wanted a mission and he got a lawn that needs mowing. He wanted purpose and he got a cubicle. He wanted a mighty steed and he got a minivan. He wanted a castle and he got a mortgage. He wanted a battle to fight and he got televised sports. He wanted wisdom and he got talking heads on TV. He wanted treasure and he got endless debt. He wanted every part of his life to be wonderful, and here he is... standing on a balcony, in bleak, ruminating hesitation. — Zan Perrion

She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year. "A few hundred," she said.
"How do you have the time?" he asked, gobsmacked.
She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pre-game, in-game, and post-game talking heads? Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati? Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in reflective surfaces? I am reading!
"I don't know," she said, shrugging. — Eleanor Brown

Punk-rock records came out and you bought whatever you could find. But Devo didn't happen for another three years. Sex Pistols didn't tour the States until '78. At that time, for me, it was really about CBGB, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, the Ramones, and Television. — Michael Stipe

I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators. — Asif Kapadia

What Hamlet suffers from is a lack of zombies. Let us say Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up - Ho-HO! Now you've got something that stirs the, um, something that stirs things that are stirrable. BOOM! A pack of ravenous flesh-eaters breaks open their heads and sucks out their eyeballs. No need for iambic pentameter because they are grunting, groaning annihilators of humanity with no time for meter. You're not asleep in the back of English class anymore, are you? This is what I'm talking about. Zombies. Learn it, live it, love it. — Libba Bray

When I was little, people like Talking Heads were on the radio. There was something geeky yet groundbreaking about them. — Bat For Lashes

She waited for some time without hearing anything more: at last came a rumbling of little cart-wheels, and the sound of a good many voices all talking together: she made out the words: "Where's the other ladder? - Why, I hadn't to bring but one. Bill's got the other - Bill! Fetch it here, lad! - Here, put 'em up at this corner - No, tie 'em together first - they don't reach half high enough yet - Oh! they'll do well enough. Don't be particular - Here, Bill! catch hold of this rope - Will the roof bear? - Mind that loose slate - Oh, it's coming down! Heads below!" (a loud crash) - "Now, who did that? - It was Bill, I fancy - Who's to go down the chimney? - Nay, I shan't! You do it! - That I wo'n't, then! - Bill's got to go down - Here, Bill! The master says you've got to go down the chimney! — Lewis Carroll

But between the busy heads and over-reaching arms he could see Charley and Sylvia, sitting close together, talking and listening more than eating. She was in a new strange state of happiness not to be reasoned about, or accounted for, but in a state of more exquisite feeling than she had ever experienced before; — Elizabeth Gaskell

With the growth of market individualism comes a corollary desire to look for collective, democratic responses when major dislocations of financial collapse, unemployment, heightened inequality, runaway inflation, and the like occur. The more such dislocations occur, the more powerful and internalized, Hayek insists, neoliberal ideology must become; it must become embedded in the media, in economic talking heads, in law and the jurisprudence of the courts, in government policy, and in the souls of participants. Neoliberal ideology must become a machine or engine that infuses economic life as well as a camera that provides a snapshot of it. That means, in turn, that the impersonal processes of regulation work best if courts, churches, schools, the media, music, localities, electoral politics, legislatures, monetary authorities, and corporate organizations internalize and publicize these norms. — William E. Connolly

Having a conversation on a landline is more intimate than talking to someone in person. Your voices are so clear and close - you're in each other's heads. — Rainbow Rowell

I'm just a sucker even talking to you guys. I should be ready to rip your heads off your necks. But it's just not the right thing to do — Mike Tyson

Pape called Basil his sanctuary. In truth we all exist in our own sanctuaries-but I don't mean cathedrals or prisons. I'm talking about our hearts and minds, which imprison us in anxiety, dear, insecurity, anger and other forms of misery. The walls & bars that keep most in a constant state of suffering are thoughts and emotions, not concrete & steel. It's a disease. Insanity. Most are afflicted by it, regardless of which side of the law they find themselves on or where they lay their heads at night. To be free of this, Renee, is to be free indeed. — Ted Dekker

When I give a speech at a corporate event, I often ask those in attendance, 'Do you know how to tell if you're doing the job?' As heads start whispering back and forth, I provide these clue: 'If you're up at 3 A.M. every night talking into a tape recorder and writing notes on scraps of paper, have a knot in your stomach and a rash on your skin, are losing sleep and losing touch with your wife and kids, have no appetite or sense of humor, and feel that everything might turn out wrong, then you're probably doing the job.' — Bill Walsh

One of the challenges was to make a cinematic movie about literally talking heads and to try to make it feel like something you want to see in a theater. — Morgan Neville

So many of the blemished didn't know what to do with silence. Sunny'd learned that well enough at the coffee shop, where people insisted on talking, talking. To be "social," they said, but she thought it was because they didn't really know what to do with themselves if they had to listen to what was in their heads instead of what came out from their mouths. — Megan Hart

Teaching by example, radical obedience, justice, mercy, activism, and sacrifice wholly inspires me. I'm at that place where "well done" trumps "well said." When I see kingdom work in the middle of brokenness, when mission transitions from the academic soil of the mind into the sacrificial work of someone's hands, I am utterly affected. Obedience inspires me. Servant leaders inspire me. Humility inspires me. Talking heads dissecting apologetics stopped inspiring me a few years ago. — Jen Hatmaker

Talking Heads, for me and Chris, was a very personal thing that we shared with a lot of people. In a way, I'm glad it's over, because it allows us to move beyond the restrictions that followed. — Tina Weymouth

And yet, quite often, she comes to me. Seldom to have anything explained, but often to tell me something.
When she comes over to me, I sit down on the floor. It does not seem right to tower over her when she is talking to me. Instead I sit down, then our heads are on a level. — Peter Hoeg

Tree At My Window
Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather. — Robert Frost

Hello girls! My boobies are curiously sticking their heads up, trying to see what vagina is so breathlessly talking about. — A.O. Peart

I make up cassettes all the time - to take on the road with me - a song from this album, a song from that album. That's the way I listen to music; it's like one of those K Tel things: it's from all over. I listen to Fred Astaire, I listen to African folk music, I listen to Talking Heads. — Robert Palmer

Over and over again, financial experts and wonkish talking heads endeavor to explain these mysterious, 'toxic' financial instruments to us lay folk. Over and over, they ignobly fail, because we all know that no one understands credit default obligations and derivatives, except perhaps Mr. Buffett and the computers who created them. — Richard Dooling

But the point is, the talking heads are wrong. The loss won't bring back a simpler time. Only a search for something new to fill the void. — Wayne Gladstone

The thing I've learned traveling through the United States is that the people in each city are usually awesome, it's generally the 'talking heads' that give us trouble. — Christopher Sieber