140 Quotes by David Bowie

Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who have been there.

Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.

Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.

If I never wake again, I certainly will have lived while I was alive.

And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds are immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of what they're going through.

The Internet is merely a new means of communication, that's all it is. It serves the purpose of getting information, which it is fantastic at. I mean, I live by the Internet in terms of research and it's incredible - there's nothing that you can't find out about. It's not stopped me going to bookshops but I must say that I don't go into as many because any book I want.

I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring.

I'm a born librarian with a sex drive.

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I suspect that dreams are an integral part of existence, with far more use for us than we've made of them...The fine line between the dream state and reality is at times, for me, quite grey.

The end comes when the infinites arrive.

I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.

Put on your red shoes, and dance the blues.

You can neither win nor lose if you don't run the race

I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on.

Trust nothing but your own experience.

For me a chameleon is something that disguises itself to look as much like its environment as possible. I always thought I did exactly the opposite of that.

Comfort comes into your house first as guest, then as a host, then finally as the master.

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I'm looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

Once you lose that sense of wonder at being alive, you're pretty much on the way out.

I re-invented my image so many times that I'm in denial that I was originally an overweight Korean woman.

You would think that a rock star being married to a super-model would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.

The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

There's a starman waiting in the sky, he'd like to come and meet us, but he thinks he'd blow our minds.

Style is about the choices you make to create the aspects of civilization that you wish to uphold.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.

The moment you know you know you know.

Look up here, I'm in heaven.

I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir.

I'm not sure whether it is me changing my mind, or whether I lie a lot.

On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.

You can't put down anybody. You can just try and understand. The emphasis shouldn't be on revolution, it should be on communication. Because it's just going to get more uptight. The more the revolution goes on, and there will be a civil war sooner or later.

The minute you know you're on safe ground, you're dead.

Everything we look at and choose is some way of expressing how we want to be perceived.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what for me is inexpressible by any other means.

There's a terror in knowing what the world is about

I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants.

Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left.

If you come from art, you'll always be art.

Elvis was a major hero of mine. I was probably stupid enough to believe that having the same birthday as him actually meant something.

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

I'm in awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

I once asked [John] Lennon what he thought of what I do. He said 'it's great, but its just rock and roll with lipstick on'.

The only art I'll ever study is stuff I can steal from.

Rock has always been the devil's music... I believe that rock & roll is dangerous... I feel that we're only heralding something even darker than ourselves.

I don't have stylistic loyalty. That's why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

All art is unstable. Its meaning is not necessarily that implied by the author. There is no authoritative voice. There are only multiple readings.

I surrounded myself with people who indulged my ego. They treated me as though I was Ziggy Stardust or one of my characters, never realising that David Jones might be behind it.

I met my wife because we were both going out with the same guy.

I am a moderately good singer. I am not a great singer but I can interpret a song, which I don't think is quite the same as singing it.

Speak in extremes, it'll save you time.

And I think my spaceship knows which way to go.

In your fear, seek only peace. In your fear, seek only love.

Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth.

It took me a long time to reach the bottom and it went through various stages. I went from drugs into an alcohol stage. For a while, one feels, "Ah, I've kicked drugs," but what I discovered was I had another addiction instead.

Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I'm referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man.

You can't stand still on one point for your entire life.

I'm really quite bipolar, and the depressed times, when everything felt like night, sometimes you get to such a low point that you physically beat at it until it bleeds - as you would say - bleeds till sunshine.

I can ask for cigarettes in every language

I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me.

When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I've got left?

Turn and face the strange.

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

I never heard so many kids talk about just doing anything to be famous. I mean, yeah, fame is part of the deal when you're a kid and you think, I wanna go into music, but everybody that I knew was really doing it because of their love for it. I don't see so much of that anymore.

The name Bowie just appealed to me when I was younger. I was into a kind of heavy philosophy thing when I was 16 years old, and I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that.

You write down a paragraph or two describing several different subjects creating a kind of story ingredients-list, I suppose, and then cut the sentences into four or five-word sections; mix em up and reconnect them. You can get some pretty interesting idea combinations like this. You can use them as is or, if you have a craven need to not lose control, bounce off these ideas and write whole new sections.

I'm very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn't think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that's happening to me. I'm rather surprised at who I am, because I'm actually like my dad!

I haven't changed my views much since I was about 12, really, I've just got a 12-year-old mentality.When I was in school I had a brother who was into Kerouac and he gave me On The Road to read when I was 12 years old. That's still been a big influence.

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.

In my madness I see your face in mine.

You should turn around at the end of the day and say I really like that piece of work, or that piece of work sucked. Not, was that popular or wasn't it popular?

Hear this Robert Zimmerman, I wrote a song for you, about a strange young man called Dylan with a voice like sand and glue.

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

I think the first song I ever wrote ... was called "Can't Help Thinking About Me." That's an illuminating little piece, isn't it?

I couldn't stand to be separated with my wife for months. It became quickly apparent to me that I needed to find a balance between my absolute work obsession and a private life that we could share without my disappearing all the time.

I was always accused of being cold and unfeeling. It was because I was intimidated about touching people.

I think the only music I didn't listen to was country and western, and that holds to this day.

Make the best of every moment. We're not evolving. We're not going anywhere.

I've never responded well to entrenched negative thinking.

It makes me sad when I see artists who come alive when they go onstage, because, gee, I really come alive when I'm home.

I hate albums that are really happy. When I am really happy, I don't like to hear happy albums, and when I am really sad I don't wanna hear happy albums... and I tend to gravitate towards the lonely and isolated anyway when I write.

Ground control to Major Tom.

Hey man, I gotta straighten my face. This mellow thighed chick just put my spine out of place.

There were lots of nightly relationships. But the reason you don't want to make a commitment is not that you're such a freewheeling, adventurous person, it's because you're scared shitless that it will turn out like your mother and father.

I'm drawn between the light and dark.

I'll place my love beneath the stars.

It's only forever... Not long at all.

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.

It's a compulsive need to wreck everything. You might notice there's a pattern of stripping down and building back up again throughout my life. But I guess that's how some of us conduct our lives.

She asked for my love and I gave her a dangerous mind.

Am I Machiavellian? I don't think I'm quite the mastermind people would have me be. Everything I do tends to be very successful and it may have something to do with the fact that I'm very good, not necessarily that I manipulate. But that doesn't often occur to people.

I've been putting out the fire with gasoline.

I'm very shy. That's probably one of the reasons I got so heavily into drugs.

To be taken seriously about doing something creative and probably travel a lot. That was my motivation. I knew I was good, I knew I could write. I also knew you could get laid really easily.

I've come to the realisation that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing half the time...

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.

I'm a thinker not a talker.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

If it works, it's out of date.

I had enormous self-image, problems and very low self-esteem, which I hid behind obsessive writing and performing. It's exactly what I do now except I enjoy it now. I'm not driven like I was in my twenties. I was driven to get through life very quickly.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I've seen on some of the songs that I've written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

I have found myself deeply, deeply intrigued by the ska-punk scene. It's such an expressive form of popular music, it's so real, it's got so much life: it's the most vital music in the world.

It always felt like you were trying too hard to look like the audience or something. That whole thing about the artistic integrity, which, of course, I've never bought into - with any artist. It's just not a real thing.

They [people] mistake fashion for style.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

The humanists' replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you'll either save yourself or you'll be immortal. Of course, that's a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there's no ethical progress whatsoever.

Some people are marching together and some on their own. Others are running, the smaller ones crawl. But some sit in silence.

My sexual nature is irrelevant. I'm an actor, I play roles, fragments of myself.

Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd was the first person in rock I had seen with makeup on. He wore black nail polish and lots of mascara and black eye shadow, and he was so mysterious. It was this androgynous thing I found absolutely fascinating.

Time may change me, but I can't trace time.

It was fun to be clever.

What I do is I write mainly about very personal and rather lonely feelings, and I explore them in a different way each time. You know, what I do is not terribly intellectual. I'm a pop singer for Christ's sake. As a person, I'm fairly uncomplicated.

Nothing prepared me for your smile

And it's always the same kind of artist, I think, who has more enjoyment being slightly on the outside of things, who doesn't want to be sucked into the tyranny of the mainstream. Because once you get sucked into that, you're dead as an artist.

Don't let me hear you say life takes you nowhere, angel.

I'm not at ease with the word "love."

I'll ruin everything you are, I'll give you television.

I was told that it was cool to fall in love, and that period was nothing like that to me. I gave too much of my time and energy to another person and they did the same to me and we started burning out against each other. And that is what is termed love.

You can begin really looking for a relationship. when you can appreciate the whole concept of giving to someone, not just taking.

Touring with Iggy Pop was something to do. It was good fun. I got drunk a lot.

Never bored, so I'll never get old

Of course, we found out later Syd Barrett had mental problems. But there was something so otherworldly about him. He was hovering, like, six inches above the ground.

A lot of people that I know are bugged with the idea that they have got to have an audience, or they have got to be liked. I think the more that you fall into that trap it makes your own life harder to come to terms with, because an audience appreciation is only going to be periodic at the best of times.

It would be positively boring if minds were in tune.

There's a thing that just as you go to sleep, if you keep your elbows elevated that you will never go below the dream stage. And I've used that quite a lot and it keeps me dreaming much longer than if I just relaxed.

I'm still younger than Jagger... Most people are.

Secret thinker sometimes listening aloud.

I'm gay and always have been, even when I was David Jones.

I can't keep my fingers out of any pies.

People will keep the TV on even if a show is on that they hate - because, unfortunately, they've been programmed to do that.

I'm regarded quite asexually by a lot of people. And the people that understand me the best are nearer to what I understand about me.

My work is really the accumulation of these different moods that I've had throughout my life and where they've taken me. I start looking back, and I think, I've actually created a life out of all this, out of these changes of mood. They've pushed me through all these years, and I seem to have a semblance of a life, and if I look very carefully, I can see some thematic design to it. There's some continuity.

The media is either our salvation or our death.

I think hip-hop is actually one of the most challenging things that's happened in music in a long time.

I think that the history of rock could be recycled in a different way and brought back into focus without the luggage that comes along with it.