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I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's bullshit.

David Byrne

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David Byrne
Age: 119
Born: 1905
Born: May 6
Actor
Artist
Blogger
Composer
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Film Score Composer
Guitarist
Music Journalist
Musician
Photographer
Crime
Danger
Poverty
Art
Believe
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Good
Bullshit

More quotes by David Byrne

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I've rarely kept my distance from kind of - I don't know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, 'Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.'
David Byrne
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Often I don't know what the song means until it's finished. Sometimes months later. I don't think that's bad. It implies that I don't know what I'm doing but-I think if you're able to follow your instincts, then that's knowing what you're doing.
David Byrne
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There's still a feeling that uncensored emotions make a good song. They don't. Pure emotion is just somebody screaming at you, or crying. It doesn't communicate anything.
David Byrne
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Probably the reason it's a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you're getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you're going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there's a kind of bundle.
David Byrne
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From what I've heard, Paris did a little bit more prep work as far as making bike lanes and all of that stuff. They really did it properly, which New York is getting to little by little.
David Byrne
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As everything becomes digitized, there's the idea that things that can't be digitized become more valuable.
David Byrne
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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.
David Byrne
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Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.
David Byrne
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The idea of making music from an imaginary culture was to give ourselves a set of restrictions and parameters within which to work. Otherwise, we might have just gone on all kinds of creative detours, some of which might have been interesting. But better we confine ourselves to something.
David Byrne
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I have something to say about the difference between American and European cities, but I forgot what it was. I have it written down at home somewhere.
David Byrne
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I'm afraid that everything will get homogenized and be the same
David Byrne
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To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.
David Byrne
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I'd been keeping tour diaries, and especially when I go somewhere where I felt the experience might be interesting, like Eastern Europe or South America or whatever, where the whole perception of what I was doing there and stuff that I was seeing and music I was hearing, I could put all that into a diary.
David Byrne
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This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.
David Byrne
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Real sadness is such an all-encompassing intense thing that it takes you out of your humdrum existence. If you can still function, you want to show it while it's peaking. So when people tell you to cheer up, it's not always the best thing.
David Byrne
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Is giving in to the photographer's presumably natural impulse to compose and light well sometimes okay and not okay other times?
David Byrne
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People use irony as a defense mechanism.
David Byrne
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The voting booth joint is a great leveler the whole neighborhood - rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky - they all turn out in one day.
David Byrne
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I couldn't take pictures of green rolling hills.
David Byrne
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I try to write about small things. Paper, animals, a house... love is kind of big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp.
David Byrne