David Byrne Quotes

It's pretty much rock-'n'-roll. I sit down and start feeling stuff and writing.

Whatever poetry that was in me was coming out in the form of constructing art books!

Sometimes words are not needed, and the simplicity of expressing yourself through an art form is one of the best ways of communication.

Some things feel really good to sing: there's a physical aspect, but there's more to it - a deeper place you go to.

I draw what I feel, which is no more than doing my job.

Writing for myself and writing for another artist are two very different experiences. When I handle both the story and the art, I have full control. I can endlessly tweak every word and every line.

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

You have to have the time to feel sorry for yourself in order to be a good abstract expressionist.

When I go into the studio I just want to make something that feels good.

Social media gives a lot of people a platform where they can express their feelings. I like to do mine through songs. I let info build up. In some way, it translates into paper whenever I sit down.

I express myself through song when I can't let people in on my thoughts otherwise. I need the creative process.

My first mixtape especially - that came from a heartbreak.

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

All real works of art look as though they were done in joy.

As an artist, I want to interpret my feelings

Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.

Art is concerned with the HOW and not the WHAT.

Something that you feel will find its own form.

In my sculpture, it's not an image I am seeking, it's not an idea. My goal is to re-live a past emotion. My art is an exorcism, and beauty is something I never talk about.

Poetry is what happens when an anxiety meets a technique.

There's always been anger in the making of music or literature or dance.

Art is mind and heart and touch as much and more than it is mere instrument, technique - without which however it cannot exist at all.

An author accepting language's invitation to dance steps onto the floor of his her sensibility-charged consciousness and begins to move instinctively--even if with much dread--in ways that synchronize images, ideas, emotions, sounds, smells, ignorance, and knowledge.

Before I started writing my album, I didn't tell people many things. But because I'm going to the studio every day and telling strangers my deepest and darkest emotions, it's made me more of an open book. I wear my heart on my sleeve a lot more now than I did.

There are things that are shadow sides of the creative energy that are negative and all that kind of stuff. The only thing that I say to myself is, in the spirit of that quote from the Gnostic Gospels: Writing is a way to let all that stuff out into the sun.