David Bowie Quotes

We can be heroes just for one day

Sometimes I don't feel as if I'm a person at all. I'm just a collection of other people's ideas.

The answer that I’d give you will cause such turmoil in your soul that I might have to politely and reluctantly not answer that question.

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.

The night before flying to New York, I watched Bowie's brief performance as a serene, pragmatic Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. 'That's a strange movie to watch before going on a plane flight,' Bowie laughs. 'It's like, shall we find out — is there a God?' Then, as if moving on to the next logical topic, Bowie says, 'I can't wait to see the other 10 percent of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're in fragments, of course, kind of a Bill Burroughs effect...' and he recounts for me a certain conspiracy theory ('a '70s thing') about a secret section of the Dead Sea Scrolls supposedly written by a Jesus who'd escaped from the cross and ended up dying a revolutionary at Masada. This secret stuff is, according to the theory, held in the Vatican and shown only to each new Pope on the day of election. But what on earth, I ask, could the big secret be anyway? 'Oh,' laughs Bowie, 'that there really was a Brian.

Time -
He flexes like a whore,
Falls wanking to the floor.
His trick is you and me, boy.

- Time

I'm afraid of Americans.

Don't let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere, angel
Come get up my baby.
Look at that sky, life's begun
Nights are warm and the days are young
Come get up my baby.

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.

Some make you sing and some make you scream,
One makes you wish that you'd never been seen.
But there's a shop on the corner that's selling papier-mache,
Making bullet-proof faces, Charlie Manson, Cassius Clay.
If you want it, boys, get it here, thing.

- Sweet Thing

Saying more and feeling less Saying no but meaning yes This is all I ever meant That's the message that I sent

It's always time to question what has become standard and established.

Never play to the gallery... Never work for other people in what you do. Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you co-exist with the rest of society... I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfil other people's expectations.

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

But the film is a saddening bore, 'cause I wrote it ten times or more.