David Bowie
And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.Collection: Dad
That's the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God - so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true... Hell, don't pose me that one.Collection: God
For me, often, there's such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I'm going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don't know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.Collection: Age
All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.Collection: Art
Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.Collection: Learning
Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.Collection: Famous
To not be modest about it, you'll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I've worked with have done their best work by far with me.Collection: Best
I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir.Collection: Famous
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?Collection: Time
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.Collection: Intelligence
All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.Collection: Work
Tony Visconti and I had been wanting to work together again for a few years now. Both of us had fairly large commitments and for a long time we couldn't see a space in which we could get anything together.Collection: Space
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.Collection: Money
It would be my guess that Madonna is not a very happy woman. From my own experience, having gone through persona changes like that, that kind of clawing need to be the center of attention is not a pleasant place to be.Collection: Experience
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.Collection: Intelligence
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.Collection: Music
Art was, seriously, the only thing I'd ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.Collection: Change
Age doesn't bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It's the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.Collection: Age
I realized the other day that I've lived in New York longer than I've lived anywhere else. It's amazing: I am a New Yorker. It's strange; I never thought I would be.Collection: Amazing
The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.Collection: Truth
I find only freedom in the realms of eccentricity.Collection: Freedom
Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.Collection: Relationship
I change my mind a lot. I usually don't agree with what I say very much. I'm an awful liar.Collection: Change
There's a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I'm affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn't want to leave. He likes it very much.Collection: Family
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!Collection: Dad
Searching for music is like searching for God. They're very similar. There's an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don't exist.Collection: Music
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.Collection: Music
I feel confident imposing change on myself. It's a lot more fun progressing than looking back. That's why I need to throw curve balls.Collection: Change
I'm not one of those guys that has a great worldview. I kind of deal with terror and fear and isolation and abandonment.
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.
I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part.
I'm not very articulate.
There's an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don't exist.
I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs - that's where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that's very cool.
If I had a talent, it was for looking askew at everything, possibly more than my contemporaries. But I had to really push myself to be a writer.
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 truest form of any form of revolutionary Left, whatever you want to call it, was Jack Kerouac, E.E. Cummings, & Ginsberg's period. Excuse me, but that's where it was at.
I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he's up there with Bryan Ferry.
The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic, nihilistic.
I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.
The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years.
I don't crave applause. I'm not one of those guys who comes alive on stage. I'm much more alive at home, I think.
I'm an early riser. I get up between five and six, have coffee, and read for a couple of hours before everyone else gets up.
I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.
Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that - that sense of reinvention. Kids learned that however crazy you may think it is, there is a place for what you want to do and who you want to be.
But I'm pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people.
I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.
There are times when I prefer a cerebral moment with an artist, and I'll just enjoy the wit of a Picabia or a Duchamp. It amuses me that they thought that what they did would be a good way of making art.
I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.
I've never responded well to entrenched negative thinking.