David Bowie Quotes

62 Sourced Quotes

I have to take total control myself. I can't let anybody else do anything, for I find that I can do things better for me. I don't want to get other people playing with what they think that I'm trying to do.

David Bowie
My particular thing is discovering what can be done with media and how it can be used. You can't draw people together like one big huge family, people don't want that. They want isolation or a tribal thing.

David Bowie
I would like to believe that people knew what they were fighting for and why they wanted a revolution, and exactly what it was within that they didn't like.

David Bowie
I get offered so many bad movies. And they're all raging queens or transvestites or Martians.

David Bowie
Oh you pretty things
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and papas insane?
Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for Homo Superior.

David Bowie
I don't believe in proper cinema; it doesn't have the strength of television. People having to go out to the cinema is really archaic. I'd much rather sit at home.

David Bowie
Look up here, I'm in heaven
I've got scars that can't be seen.

David Bowie
People look to me to see what the spirit of the Seventies is.

David Bowie
I don't like to read things that people write about me. I'd rather read what kids have to say about me, because it's not their profession to do that.

David Bowie
I'm terribly intuitive—I always thought I was intellectual about what I do, but I've come to the realisation that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing half the time, that the majority of the stuff that I do is totally intuitive, totally about where I am physically and mentally at any moment in time and I have a far harder time than anybody else explaining it and analysing it. That's the territory of the artist anyway: to be quite at sea with what he does, and working towards not being intuive about it and being far more methodical and academic about it.

David Bowie
Sexuality and where it is going is an extraordinary question, for I don't see it going anywhere. It is with me, and that's it.

David Bowie
I went to a middle-class school, but my background is working class. I got the best of both worlds, I saw both classes, so I have a pretty fair idea of how people live and why they do it.

David Bowie
People are always throwing things at me that I've said and I say that I didn't mean anything.

David Bowie
I find it easier to write in these little vignettes; if I try to get any more heavy, I find myself out of my league.

David Bowie
There's not much point in getting any heavier... there's too many things to read and look at.

David Bowie
A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle. The rock stars have assimilated all kinds of philosophies, styles, histories, writings, and they throw out what they have gleaned from that.

David Bowie
Love is every type of relationship that you think of... I'm sure it means relationship, every type of relationship that you can think of.

David Bowie
I was studying Tibetan Buddhism when I was quite young, again influenced by Kerouac.

David Bowie
What the music says may be serious, but as a medium it should not be questioned, analysed, or taken so seriously. I think it should be tarted up, made into a prostitute, a parody of itself.

David Bowie
There have been times when I've written something and it goes out and it comes back in a letter from some kid as to what they think about it and I've taken their analysis to heart so much that I have taken up his thing. Writing what my audience is telling me to write.

David Bowie
Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write. I didn't like writing "Heathen". There was something so ominous and final about it. It was early in the morning, the sun was rising and through the windows I could see two deer grazing down below in the field. In the distance a car was driving slowly past the reservoir and these words were just streaming out and there were tears running down my face. But I couldn't stop, they just flew out. It's an odd feeling, like something else is guiding you, although forcing your hand is more like it.

David Bowie
You've got your mother in a whirl
She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl.
Hey babe, your hair's alright.
Hey babe, let's go out tonight.
You like me, and I like it all.
We like dancing and we look divine.
You love bands when they're playing hard.
You want more and you want it fast.

David Bowie
I want people to hear musicians like Joe Cuba. He has done things to whole masses of Puerto Rican people. The music is fantastic and important.

David Bowie
I will be king
and you
you will be queen,
though nothing will drive them away
We can be heroes
Just for one day.

David Bowie
Music has given me over 40 years of extraordinary experiences. I can't say that life's pains or more tragic episodes have been diminished because of it. But it's allowed me so many moments of companionship when I've been lonely and a sublime means of communication when I wanted to touch people. It's been both my doorway of perception and the house that I live in.
I only hope that it embraces you with the same lusty life force that it graciously offered me.

David Bowie