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Music Quotes by David Bowie

48 Music quotes by David Bowie

All Music quotes David Bowie’s page

Rock has often been called the devil’s music, yet the quotes show how many musicians give their best work when collaborating with him. He describes wanting to be a vehicle for his songs, to color them with visual expression, and even to step away from music into painting. He also dreams of writing whole, blending sound and stage.

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I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

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I wanted to rewrite how rock music was perceived.

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I've always tended to write songs prolifically.

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Rock's always been the devil's music.

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I made a more mature approach to industrial music.

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Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write.

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I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players.

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I really wanted to do, more than anything else, up until I was around 16, 17, was write musicals.

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I think hip-hop is actually one of the most challenging things that's happened in music in a long time.

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I want people to hear musicians like Joe Cuba. He has done things to whole masses of Puerto Rican people. The music…

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I think music should be tarted up, made into a prostitute, a parody of itself. It should be the clown, the Pierrot…

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

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“Written in pain, written in awe By a puzzled man who questioned What we were here for - Oh! You Pretty Things ”

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The best DJs in the world know how to pull in music from all over the place and make it work as…

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There's an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music,…

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I thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing.…

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I guess a certain contingent of the musicians in London at the beginning of the '70s were fed up with denim and…

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There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my…

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Rock has always been THE DEVIL'S MUSIC . . . I believe rock and roll is dangerous . . . I feel…

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I've started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site,…

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Rock has always been the devil's music... I believe that rock & roll is dangerous... I feel that we're only heralding something…

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I never heard so many kids talk about just doing anything to be famous. I mean, yeah, fame is part of the…

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Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years…

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Searching for music is like searching for God. They're very similar. There's an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable,…

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The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to…

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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…

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On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the…

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

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I have found myself deeply, deeply intrigued by the ska-punk scene. It's such an expressive form of popular music, it's so real,…

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The underground went really underground. Grand Funk, and all these people man are the moderate's choice of music. Underground is Yoko Ono,…

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You get to a certain age, and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you…

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I thought that I could do some kind of vehicle involving rock musicals and presenting rock and characters and storyline in a…

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One day in Berlin ... Eno came running in and said, 'I have heard the sound of the future.' ... he puts…

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Rather than really have, like a close relationship to anything that's coming out today, people are just, they've got it on as…

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I don't profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me…

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I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover…

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There was a time in America not long ago when rock 'n' roll was called race music, and white kids who wanted…

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I liked rock music, I kind of moved into that sphere, somehow thinking that somewhere along the line I'd be able to…

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Songs don't have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars.…

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It's much easier for me to say that, the kind of music I didn't listen to was pretty much that. I mean…

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More by David Bowie

I don't crave applause. I'm not one of those guys who comes alive on stage. I'm much more alive at home, I think.

No more free steps to heaven.

I'm not sure whether it is me changing my mind, or whether I lie a lot.

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…

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…

I went mainstream in a major way with the song "Let's Dance." And what I found I had done was put a box around…

“Keep your 'lectric eye on me babe Put your ray gun to my head Press your space face close to mine, love Freak out…

I'm in awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for…

TV has eaten up everything else, and Warhol films are all that are left, which is fabulous. Pork could become the next I Love…

“My brain hurt like a warehouse It had no room to spare I had to cram so many things to store everything in there…

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…

... And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds are immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of…

I think the first song I ever wrote ... was called "Can't Help Thinking About Me." That's an illuminating little piece, isn't it?

I've come to the realizations that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing half the time.

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