David Byrne Artist Quotations

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.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist's creativity comes from torment. Once that's fixed, what do you draw on?

I've been asking myself: 'Why put together these things - CDs, albums?' The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it's artistically viable. It's not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it's not obvious or even conscious on the artists' part.

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

I came to New York to be a fine artist - that was my ambition.

Sometimes the European and North American public like some things to be exotic and kept at arm's length. They don't want sometimes to know that foreign artists are doing something that's at least as relevant as what's being done here.