On Bowie Quotes & Sayings

I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man / just a mortal with potential of a superman / I'm living on. — David Bowie

Some people are marching together and some on their own. Others are running, the smaller ones crawl. But some sit in silence. — David Bowie

Strung out on lasers and slash back blazers. — David Bowie

With that, Quincy brought the bowie knife down on Moon's cuffed hand and chopped off four fingers which flew up before my eyes like chips from a log. Moon screamed and a rifle ball shattered the lantern in front of me and struck Quincy in the neck, causing hot blood to spurt on my face. My thought was: I am better out of this. — Charles Portis

Jeff [Koons] called me because he'd seen a portrait of David Bowie, at the beginning of the 80s - I've known Jeff for a long time - and he said, Greg, I want to look like a high-profile celebrity, living on the edge. I think that says it all. — Greg Gorman

And it's always the same kind of artist, I think, who has more enjoyment being slightly on the outside of things, who doesn't want to be sucked into the tyranny of the mainstream. Because once you get sucked into that, you're dead as an artist. — David Bowie

People got extremely comfortable with being able to turn on their television and see MTV say, "This guy's hot you should buy this record." — David Bowie

If I put faith in medication, if I can smile a crooked smile, if I can talk on television, if I can walk an empty mile. — David Bowie

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It's because I'm not quite an atheist and it worries me. There's that little bit that holds on: 'Well, I'm almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.' — David Bowie

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

I once asked [John] Lennon what he thought of what I do. He said 'it's great, but its just rock and roll with lipstick on'. — David Bowie

Nearly all the synth work on Heathen is mine and some of the piano. — David Bowie

I have all the admiration in the world for somebody like Bono, who really puts himself on the line and tries actively to do something about our world situation. — David Bowie

And these children
that you spit on
as they try to change their worlds
are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware
of what they're going through ... — David Bowie

There seem to be a lot of black artists making very good videos that I'm surprised aren't being used on MTV. — David Bowie

Everywhere I looked, demons of the future [were] on the battlegrounds of one's emotional plane. — David Bowie

We slit the Catholic throat, stoned the poor on such slogans as wish you could hear and love is all we need. — David Bowie

Once you lose that sense of wonder at being alive, you're pretty much on the way out ... — David Bowie

I've learned to relax and be my present age and my present position. I feel comfortable on my mid-thirties. It doesn't seem such an alien place to be. — 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

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. — David Bowie

If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn't exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar. — Douglas Adams

What I like doing is writing and recording and much more on the, I guess, the - on that creative level. It's fun interpreting songs and all that, but I wouldn't like it as a living. — David Bowie

Are pistols with revolving barrels, sword-sticks, bowie-knives, and such things, Institutions on which you pride yourselves? Are bloody duels, brutal combats, savage assaults, shooting down and stabbing in the streets, your Institutions! Why, I shall hear next that Dishonour and Fraud are among the Institutions of the great republic!' The — Charles Dickens

Church on time, makes me party. — David Bowie

What exactly was Jesus' take on violent capitalism? I also have some big ideas for changing the way we think about literary morals as they pertain to legislation. Rather than suffer another attempt by the religious right to base our legalese upon the Bible, I would vote that we found it squarely upon the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien. The citizens of Middle Earth had much more tolerant policies in their governing bodies. For example, Elrond was chosen to lead the elves at Rivendell not only despite his androgynous nature but most likely because of the magical leadership inherent in a well-appointed bisexual elf wizard. That's the person you want picking shit out for your community. That's the guy you want in charge. David Bowie or a Mormon? Not a difficult equation. — Nick Offerman

The problem is that the internet IS some kid in a basement with an opinion. The fact that David Bowie and Elton John told me that they were fans of Helmet - or Neil Young - that means something to me because I grew up on their music and they're great musicians ... That means more to me than some guy who hates the fact that my hair is short. — Page Hamilton

My joke is a picture of David Bowie on his balcony in the '70s in a suit in Paris, and unless that's you, I'm not interested. There are very few aesthetic types that I have, and people who look like that are not always necessarily good for me. — Jen Kirkman

When I was about 13, 14 - 13, I would carry a magic marker with me everywhere I went so I could write the word "Bowie" on everything that wasn't mine. — RuPaul

I'm a phallus in pigtails, and there's blood on my nose, and my tissue is rotting where the rats chew my bones. And my eye sockets empty, see nothing but pain, I keep having this brainstorm about twelve times a day. — David Bowie

I've started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I'd be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music. — David Bowie

You can't put down anybody. You can just try and understand. The emphasis shouldn't be on revolution, it should be on communication. Because it's just going to get more uptight. The more the revolution goes on, and there will be a civil war sooner or later. — 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

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle. — David Bowie

Since the departure of good old-fashioned entertainers the re-emergence of somebody who wants to be an entertainer has unfortunately become a synonym for camp. I don't think I'm camper than any other person who felt at home on stage, and felt more at home on stage than he did offstage. — David Bowie

There's just some dysfunctionalism with artists. There are good things and bad things about being an artist, and the good thing is, sometimes you get an inside line on what's really happening. You develop these strange antennae that clue you in to what's really going on. — David Bowie

Planet Earth is blue.
Blue blue electric blue, that's the color of my room. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues. I never did anything out of the blue. Now my Blue Jean's blue. See these eyes so green, I could stare for a thousand years. See these eyes so red. Oh you've got green eyes, oh you've got blue eyes, oh you've got gray eyes. I'll give you television, I'll give you eyes of blue. I looked in her eyes, they were blue, but nobody home. The blue light was my baby, and the red light was my mind. See these tears so blue. You wouldn't believe what I've been through. It's been so long. And I think it's gonna be a long, long time. It's all over now, Baby Blue.
And there's nothing I can do. — Rob Sheffield

I told [reporters] that I sprinkled marijuana on my organic buckwheat pancakes, and then when I ran my five miles to the ballpark, it made me impervious to the bus fumes. That's when [Baseball Commissioner] Bowie Kuhn took me off his Christmas list. — Bill Lee

You can't stand still on one point for your entire life. — David Bowie

I would dream. I focused all my attention on going to America. The subculture, James Dean, the rock n' roll, the beat writers. — David Bowie

Early on, I was into David Bowie. Then someone in the band suggested I try a Bryan Ferry type of thing. That's when I started wearing three-piece suits. It wasn't unnatural for me. — Robin Zander

I knew that I was 'interesting' at 18 because I was aware that I could get away with doing things on stage. — David Bowie

I should live my life on bended knee
If I can't control my destiny
You've gotta have a scheme
You've gotta have a plan
In the world of today, for tomorrow's man
No control — David Bowie

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it's so essential that when I'm involved in the actual process, my so-called 'real life' becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying. — David Bowie

Put on your red shoes, and dance the blues. — David Bowie

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan. — David Bowie

I got really bored, so I decided to pick a theme song! Something appropriate. And naturally, it should be something from Lewis's godawful seventies collection. It wouldn't be right any other way. There are plenty of great candidates: "Life on Mars?" by David Bowie, "Rocket Man" by Elton John, "Alone Again (Naturally)" by Gilbert O'Sullivan. But I settled on "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. — Andy Weir

Listen to the stage manager and get on stage when they tell you to. No one has time for the rock star bullshit. None of the techs backstage care if you're David Bowie or the milkman. When you act like a jerk, they are completely unimpressed with the infantile display that you might think comes with your dubious status. They were there hours before you building the stage, and they will be there hours after you leave tearing it down. They should get your salary, and you should get theirs. — Henry Rollins

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

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I've seen on some of the songs that I've written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in. — David Bowie

Ben had never seen his mother cry before, and it startled him, so he didn't ask again. Right afterward she'd put on her favorite record and played a mysterious song called "Space Oddity," about an astronaut named Major Tom who gets lost in space. She used to listen to the song over and over again. With her eyes closed, she'd place the palm of her hand against the fabric of the speaker, so she could feel it vibrate against her skin. — Brian Selznick

Bowie's been a huge influence on me. — Adam Lambert

For me, often, there's such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I'm going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don't know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief. — David Bowie

You would think that anyone on a major label would be doing something, but when you speak of major label that means something to maybe a big pop star that might be getting some sort of benefit from the major. But we still don't get anything. — Lester Bowie

The first thing that got to me was seeing David Bowie on a children's TV show, but Bowie was way beyond my aspirations. The Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch came out in 1977 and it had a breakdown of the recording costs, then you saw Pete Shelley playing a broken guitar from Woolworths. We already had an idea of the kind of music we wanted to do, but punk showed us a way to do it. — Edwyn Collins

He always gets the birthday shit, and nobody even knows I got born. Jimmy Page was born on the ninth, you can make something out of that. But the eighth? — David Bowie

David Bowie's music is a moving target. Just when you think you got the bullseye, it shifts. And to his credit, on to death, it's still shifting. David Bowie is a moving target, even after he's gone. — Carlos Alomar

She couldn't wait to curl up on her couch and eat dinner while watching an episode of Grimm. Bowie — Tabitha Conall

The minute you know you're on safe ground, you're dead — David Bowie

One day in Berlin ... Eno came running in and said, 'I have heard the sound of the future.' ... he puts on 'I Feel Love', by Donna Summer ... He said, 'This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.' Which was more or less right. — David Bowie

I don't know any Beatles songs. My dad never listened to Elvis or Sting or Bowie. Any band name that's on a t-shirt, I probably won't know their music, like AC/DC or whatever. I don't know what that is. As a kid, I would sing along to artists like Tania Maria. — FKA Twigs

Texas was where the action was. It became a lodestar, pulling an enormous number of the men - Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, James Bowie, and others - who were already in some way legends on the old frontier. As one historian wrote, Texas seemed to cast some sort of spell, to make men who were cold, pragmatic, and opportunist in the main, want to go and die. — T.R. Fehrenbach

In my creative life, David Bowie is definitely an enormous influence on me, being one of rock's greatest shapeshifters. — Scott Weiland

On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.
David Bowie — David Bowie

Keep your 'lectric eye on me babe
Put your ray gun to my head
Press your space face close to mine, love
Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah! — David Bowie

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn't really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn't have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself. — David Bowie

Always drawn to the theatric, Bowie also performed in stage productions of "The Elephant Man" and just recently collaborated on "Lazarus," an off-Broadway musical that's a sequel to his 1976 role in the film "The Man Who Fell To Earth." — David Bowie

Somebody like Bowie was so interesting because when you got him off stage, he was like a businessman. But on stage, he was just dazzling. It was like watching butterflies grow. — D. A. Pennebaker

You can't go on stage and live - it's false all the way. I can't stand the premise of going out in jeans and a guitar and looking as real as you can in front of 18,000 people. I mean, it's not normal! — David Bowie

There's a good television programme called 'Disco 2.' It's quite good but again it's average, average. It's all on a down play. You know we've got this thing in England to be hip is to speak very down - like John Peel. And that just about sums up England. They don't realize when they talk like that, then that is what they represent - absolutely. — David Bowie

All the great mystical religions put a strong emphasis on the redeeming qualities of sex. — David Bowie

I was born in London 1947, after the war. A real wartime baby. I went to school in Brixton, and then I moved up to Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. I lived on the farms up there. — David Bowie

You can establish a presence on the internet; you can have just as much of a presence as a major company or anyone else. — Lester Bowie

They're the salt of the earth, those girls. They don't sit each night and compare notes on groups, criticising lyrics, asking if it's valid. They just play the record ... yeah, and maybe they dance. I love them. I love them dearly — David Bowie

Those who accuse these women of fraud in their image craft seem not to have heard of David Bowie's successful alter ego Ziggy Stardust or even Bob Dylan, the folksy creation of a genius named Robert Allen Zimmerman. There is a tradition of male artists taking on personae that are understood to be part of their art. It is as though there is so much genius within them that it must be split between these mortal men and the characters they create. Women who venture to do the same are ridiculed as fakers and try-hards. — Alana Massey

About a week ago I was sitting in L.A.'s chicest nightclub with a few friends and the DJ was playing Yaz and Bowie and the videos were on and I was on my third gin and tonic and I realized that no matter where I am it's always the same. Camden, New York, L.A., Palm Springs - it really doesn't seem to matter. Maybe this should be disturbing but it's really not. I find it kind of comforting. — Bret Easton Ellis

Because I believe that the future of the music lies in the Internet. It can be sold on the Internet. — Lester Bowie

I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement - it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original. — David Bowie

Jazz is so difficult. A lot of people think once they've learned these licks they can get up and play them for the rest of their life. But that's not being truthful to the music 'cause it's not developing. Cats you hear that don't make no mistakes? They ain't trying to do nothing. everything they hear is on the mark, but they've played it so many times ... I've built a whole career out of making mistakes! — Lester Bowie

Absolutely. I understand that Miss Piggy is willing to serve as Queen of Scotland if there is a split. So you may want to guard your castles.

Kermit the frog's response to the question on if he agreed with David Bowie on whether Scotland should remain as part of Britain — Kermit The Frog

David Thomas: What do you think is the worst crime that could possibly be committed? What is the crime that offends you most?
David Bowie: Seeing a man humble himself in his capacity as a worker to somebody else, and having to have that accepted as a given situation. — David Bowie

Songs don't have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I've done is about alienation ... about where you fit in society. — David Bowie

We can't stop trying til we break up our minds, til the sun drips blood on the seedy young knight. — David Bowie

I'm a person who can take on the guises of people I meet. I'm a collector, and I collect personalities and ideas. — David Bowie

I had joined Yes in 1971. I was a classically trained musician who had worked with numerous artists as a session musician. I played on David Bowie's 'Life On Mars,' Cat Stevens's 'Morning Has Broken' and even on some Des O'Connor records, though I kept that quiet. — Rick Wakeman

Rather than really have, like a close relationship to anything that's coming out today, people are just, they've got it on as background music. It's kind of the same way the cabdrivers use music; it's very disposable. — David Bowie

Some make you sing and some make you scream. One makes you wish that you'd never been seen. But there's a shop on the corner that's selling papier
mache, making bullet-proof faces, Charlie Manson, Cassius Clay.
If you want it, boys, get it here, thing. — David Bowie

When Bowie yelps that he could do better than that, I hear another young person stuck somewhere, looking out of the window and imagining how much better they would invent the world, if they were just given the chance to lay their hands on the machinery. If they could just bust into the engine room for twenty-four hours with a toolbox. — Caitlin Moran

Being a hybrid maker off and on over the years, I'm very comfortable with the idea and have been the subject of quite a few pretty good mash-ups myself. — David Bowie

I'm very curious about David Bowie's new record [2016]. I'm very, very ... I'm just incredibly curious, I want to see what's happening with that. I don't really know who else is putting out records, we've had our heads buried working on ours. I haven't really been paying much attention lately. — Patrick Stump

I never really got the book together for the thing, so I had all the songs and the characters. But by the time we'd gotten it on the road and I'd been doing it for 18 months, oh God, I couldn't wait to move on to something else. — David Bowie

I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth. — David Bowie

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds. — David Bowie

The first one hundred pages were fueled by early Misfits ("Where Eagles Dare [fast version]," "Horror Business," "Hybrid Moments") and Blanck Mass ("Dead Format"). David Bowie is in every book, and I always put on Purple Rain and Daydream Nation when I write the final pages; so thanks to him and Prince and Sonic Youth. — Colson Whitehead

Extreme zombie fighting kit. Tactical boots and tacticals. Firefighting bunker gear. Nomex head cover tucked under the collar of the bunker gear. Full face respirator. Helmet with integrated visor. Body armor with integral MOLLE. Knee, elbow and shin guards. Nitrile gloves. Tactical gloves. Rubber gloves. Assault pack with hydration unit. Saiga shotgun on friction strap rig. A .45 USP in tactical fast-draw holster. Two .45 USP in chest holsters. Fourteen Saiga ten-round 12-gauge magazines plus one in the weapon. Nine pistol magazines in holster plus three in weapons. Kukri in waist sheath. Machete in over-shoulder sheath, right. Halligan tool in over-shoulder sheath, left. Tactical knife in chest sheath. Tactical knife in waist sheath. Bowie knife in thigh sheath. Calf tactical knife times two. A few clasp knives dangling in various places. There was the head of a teddy bear peeking out of her assault pack. — John Ringo

We were terribly excited, and I think we took it on our shoulders that we were creating the 21st century in 1971. That was the idea. And we wanted to just blast everything in the past, rather like the vorticists did at the beginning of the century in the Britain or the dadaists did Europe, you know. It was the same sensibility of everything is rubbish, and all rubbish is wonderful. — David Bowie

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

It was not the same as charging down a machine-gun nest armed only with a Bowie knife, or strapping in to the tail-gunner seat of a four-engined heavy bomber. And no one else would ever know, since one did not get a medal for letting go of a woman's hand on a gray Saturday morning in the middle of a European war. But to have faith - that a lover would be constant and life clement - this did require courage in a city more disposed to beginnings than safe continuations. As — Chris Cleave

If I can get that DAM trio back together again - "get the band back together" - and put on a concert of David Bowie's electronic music, that's the way I want to remember David, moving forward into the future of music. — Carlos Alomar

No problem. Just drop it back off before you go," he says, procuring a brass key. "And if he puts on Bowie's early stuff and starts sweet-talking, dammit, you run. You run as fast as you can. — Hannah Harrington