David Bowie quotes

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

#Tomorrow

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

#Mean #People #Said

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

#Shoes #Red

I'm rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work it's no longer his.
-- David Bowie

#School #Artist #Thinking

I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir.
-- David Bowie

#Music #Stars #Water

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

#Stills

I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants.
-- David Bowie

#Thinking #Fame #Restaurants

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

#Lying #Mind #Not Sure

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

#Alive #Way #Wonder

I usually don't agree with what I say very much. I'm an awful liar.
-- David Bowie

#Liars #Awful #Agree

I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.
-- David Bowie

#People #Amazed

I went to a middle-class school, but my background is working class. I got the best of both worlds, I saw both classes, so I have a pretty fair idea of how people live and why they do it.
-- David Bowie

#School #Class #Ideas

I can ask for cigarettes in every language
-- David Bowie

#Smoking #Language #Cigarette

Critics I don't understand. They get too intellectual. They're not very well-versed in street talk; it takes them longer to say it. So they have to do it in dictionaries and they take longer to say it.
-- David Bowie

#Intellectual #Critics #Wells

Ground control to Major Tom.
-- David Bowie

#Expression

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

#People #Looks #Spirit

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

#Song #Mean #Interesting

I don't like to read things that people write about me. I'd rather read what kids have to say about me, because it's not their profession to do that.
-- David Bowie

#Writing #Kids #People

You would think that a rock star being married to a super-model would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.
-- David Bowie

#Stars #Thinking #Rocks

I have to take total control myself. I can't let anybody else do anything, for I find that I can do things better for me. I don't want to get other people playing with what they think that I'm trying to do.
-- David Bowie

#Thinking #People #Trying

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

#Men #Demise #Stones

I haven't changed my views much since I was about 12, really, I've just got a 12-year-old mentality.When I was in school I had a brother who was into Kerouac and he gave me On The Road to read when I was 12 years old. That's still been a big influence.
-- David Bowie

#Brother #School #Views

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

#Rocks #Rock And Roll #Lennon

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

#Children #Grateful #Race

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.
-- David Bowie

#Mother #Sex #Thinking

Trust nothing but your own experience.
-- David Bowie

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

#Stuff #Certain #Audience

You write down a paragraph or two describing several different subjects creating a kind of story ingredients-list, I suppose, and then cut the sentences into four or five-word sections; mix em up and reconnect them. You can get some pretty interesting idea combinations like this. You can use them as is or, if you have a craven need to not lose control, bounce off these ideas and write whole new sections.
-- David Bowie

#Writing #Cutting #Ideas

There have been times when I've written something and it goes out and it comes back in a letter from some kid as to what they think about it and I've taken their analysis to heart so much that I have taken up his thing. Writing what my audience is telling me to write.
-- David Bowie

#Taken #Writing #Heart

The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.
-- David Bowie

#Journey #Arriving #Truth Is

I don't like talk and I don't like talkers. Like Ma Barker. That's what she always said, 'Ma Barker doesn't like talk and she doesn't like talkers.' She just sat there with her gun.
-- David Bowie

#Gun #Said #Sat

Don't let me hear you say life takes you nowhere, angel.
-- David Bowie

#Inspirational #Angel #Let Me

I find it easier to write in these little vignettes; if I try to get any more heavy, I find myself out of my league.
-- David Bowie

#Writing #League #Trying

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

#Summer #Running #Years

TV has eaten up everything else, and Warhol films are all that are left, which is fabulous. Pork could become the next I Love Lucy, the great American domestic comedy. It's about how people really live, not like Lucy, who never touched dishwater. It's about people living and hustling to survive.
-- David Bowie

#People #Hustle #Fabulous

... 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

#Children #Trying #World

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

#Rocks #Important #Doe

Turn and face the strange.
-- David Bowie

#Faces #Strange #Turns

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

#Stars #Kids #Rocks

The moment you know you know you know.
-- David Bowie

#Moments

My particular thing is discovering what can be done with media and how it can be used. You can't draw people together like one big huge family, people don't want that. They want isolation or a tribal thing.
-- David Bowie

#Media #People #Together

The sun machine is coming down, and we're gonna have a party.
-- David Bowie

#Party #Machines #Down And

I don't believe in proper cinema; it doesn't have the strength of television. People having to go out to the cinema is really archaic. I'd much rather sit at home.
-- David Bowie

#Believe #Home #People

Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth.
-- David Bowie

#Mouths #Cigarette

I want people to hear musicians like Joe Cuba. He has done things to whole masses of Puerto Rican people. The music is fantastic and important.
-- David Bowie

#People #Important #Musician

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

#Moments #Evolve

There's not much point in getting any heavier... there's too many things to read and look at.
-- David Bowie

#Looks

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

#Art #Stuff #Study

Things have to hit for the moment. That's one of the reasons I'm into video; the image has to hit immediately. I adore video and the whole cutting up of it.
-- David Bowie

#Cutting #Video #Moments

Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left.
-- David Bowie

#Running #Unique #Years

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

#Running #Winning #Race

I was studying Tibetan Buddhism when I was quite young, again influenced by Kerouac.
-- David Bowie

#Buddhism #Study #Young

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 will play everybody.
-- David Bowie

#Writing #Play #Numbers

The media is either our salvation or our death.
-- David Bowie

#Media #Salvation

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 the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.
-- David Bowie

#Religious #Buddhist #Powerful

The younger people get into the lyrics in a different way; there's much more of a tactile understanding, which is the way I prefer it.
-- David Bowie

#People #Understanding #Different

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.
-- David Bowie

#Needs #Humans

The end comes when the infinites arrive.
-- David Bowie

#Infinite #Ends

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

#Thinking #Negative #Negative Thinking

Songwriting as an art is a bit archaic now. Just writing a song is not good enough.
-- David Bowie

#Song #Art #Writing

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.
-- David Bowie

#Men #Interesting #Mediocrity

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. The rock stars have assimilated all kinds of philosophies, styles, histories, writings, and they throw out what they have gleaned from that.
-- David Bowie

#Song #Stars #Philosophy

It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.
-- David Bowie

#Intelligent #People #Judgement

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

#Mind #Tunes #Would Be

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

#Hands #Awakening #Ghost

The coming together of people I find obscene as a principle. It is not human. It is not a natural thing as some people would have us believe.
-- David Bowie

#Believe #People #Together

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I've got left?
-- David Bowie

#Two #Long #Three

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

#Ease

Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who have been there.
-- David Bowie

#Clever #People #Spirituality

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

#Falling In Love #Energy #Burning

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

#Couple #Musician #Done

Love is every type of relationship that you think of... I'm sure it means relationship, every type of relationship that you can think of.
-- David Bowie

#Mean #Love Is #Thinking

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

#Men #Light #Mind

Sexuality and where it is going is an extraordinary question, for I don't see it going anywhere. It is with me, and that's it.
-- David Bowie

#Sexuality #Extraordinary

I don't have stylistic loyalty. That's why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.
-- David Bowie

#Loyalty #Integrity #Real

Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.
-- David Bowie

#Oxford #Long #Firsts

I'm regarded quite asexually by a lot of people. And the people that understand me the best are nearer to what I understand about me.
-- David Bowie

#People #Understand Me

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

#Years #Doe #Explaining

The people who don't know so much about me regard me more sexually.
-- David Bowie

#People #Sexually

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

#Mean #Want #Way

The name Bowie just appealed to me when I was younger. I was into a kind of heavy philosophy thing when I was 16 years old, and I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that.
-- David Bowie

#Lying #Philosophy #Cutting