David Byrne Quotations | Page 3

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.

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.

Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don't sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck.

The city is a body and a mind - a physical structure as well as a repository of ideas and information.

I can't deny that label-support gave me a leg up - though not every successful artist needs it.

Domination and monopoly is the name of the game in the web marketplace.

Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context.

I've made money, and I've been ripped off. I've had creative freedom, and I've been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

Technology has allowed people to make records really cheap. You can make a record on a laptop.

In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.