David Byrne Quotes

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown.

I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing; I don't know if it's any good. I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line.

No dance has ever turned out the way I thought it would, because I trust enough that I can start something with some ideas and then it takes itself somewhere.

U2's best work has always been when we didn't know what we're doing.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

The artist discards all theories, both his own and those of others. He forgets everything when he is in front of his canvas.

If the playwright knew every little thing about his play, why bother? There must be discovery all the time, otherwise why bother to do it?

That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.

When I put my brush to canvas, I never know what I'm going to paint. It's like when you're walking down the street with your hands in your pockets, humming a tune, you don't know what you'll be humming five minutes from now.

The music always takes us to different places. We'll just continue to play and see what doors open from there.

You can't ever create defensively. You just have to create the next thing that really speaks to you.

None of us understand what we're doing, but we do beautiful things anyway.

The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man; it cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself - In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable sdvice.

There can't be art without risk. It's like saying No Sex, and then expecting there to be children.

I don't really know how writing process happens, how these songs are arrived at. One of the things I like about the writing process is, I don't necessarily know where it's going, and even if I think I know where it's going, it'll turn out different. I find that exciting and rewarding.

Creative Endeavors are by their nature uncertain.

When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.

I don't think you can be taught how to make art. You can be coached, but on a fundamental level you have to figure it out for yourself. You have to learn how your own mind works, figure out your own relationship to the art; you essentially have to invent it completely for yourself.

I never know what I am writing. The moment you know what you're writing, you're writing nothing worth reading.

I always say, and I truly believe this, that my work is three steps ahead of me. I have an idea for something and I tend to feel like it's leading me and I'll follow the process through, and it's not until after I've seen it that I truly understand why I'm doing this.

I don't pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

Writing is like jazz. It can be learned, but it can't be taught.

There's no way to really mock up or simulate what I'm doing until I'm there. An exhibition for me is not a statement but an experiment.