Quotes by David Byrne

"I read the NY Times but I don't trust all of it."

"To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that."

"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.'"

"There's something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There's something that invites all this obsessive behavior."

"Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they're going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It's just a given law."

"So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame."

"The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world's popular music is a good thing, for the most part."

"There's more good music being made now than ever before."

"I've rarely seen video screens used well in a music concert."

"We tend to mistake music for the physical object."

"I'm not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down."

"People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that's pretty much all you can ask."

"We don't make music - it makes us."

"The making of music is profoundly affected by the market."

"You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends."

"It didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music."

"With music, you often don't have to translate it. It just affects you, and you don't know why."

"I found music to be the therapy of choice."

"I don't like begging money from producers."

"It's not always been a happy marriage. I guess I wanted a quick fix."