DAVID BYRNE

I wanted to be a secret agent and an astronaut, preferably at the same time.

I don't listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don't have a car.

I've noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it's various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone - a memory.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you're allowed to fail.

I'm guarded; I don't talk much.

I cycled when I was at high school, then reconnected with bikes in New York in the late '70s. It was a good way of getting around the clubs and galleries of the Lower East Side and Soho.

One knew in advance that life in New York would not be easy, but there were cheap rents in cold-water lofts without heat, and the excitement of being here made up for those hardships. I didn't move to New York to make a fortune.

Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don't buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down.

It didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

You go to a festival, you know you're not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I've made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly.

There are plenty of people who are, I think, completely racist who love hip-hop.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don't have names for what they are or haven't identified them all. We can't pinpoint exactly what makes each city's people unique yet.

So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

Everything's intentional. It's just filling in the dots.

I'd like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

Artists are notoriously snooty and suspicious of anything coming from the business community.

To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.

There's more good music being made now than ever before.

Yeah, it's pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

I'm afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn't fit that will become unnecessary.

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

Suburban houses and tin sheds are often the objects of ridicule.