110+ David Bowie Quotes On Creativity, Art And Iman

David Bowie was an English singer-songwriter who achieved worldwide fame as a rock star in the 1970s. He was known for his distinctive voice, as well as his eclectic range of musical styles, including glam rock, art rock, soul, and funk. He was also a successful actor and visual artist, and is considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Following is our collection on famous quotes by David Bowie on life, creativity, love.

Top 10 David Bowie Quotes

1. Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who have been there.
2. Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.
3. Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.
4. 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.
5. I'm a born librarian with a sex drive.
6. 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.
7. I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring.
8. I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.
9. Put on your red shoes, and dance the blues.
10. I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on.

David Bowie Image Quotes

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

Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties. — David Bowie

David Bowie Short Quotes

• Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties.
• Comfort comes into your house first as guest, then as a host, then finally as the master.
• Once you lose that sense of wonder at being alive, you're pretty much on the way out.
• Style is about the choices you make to create the aspects of civilization that you wish to uphold.
• I'm not sure whether it is me changing my mind, or whether I lie a lot.
• I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir.
• There's a terror in knowing what the world is about
• I was studying Tibetan Buddhism when I was quite young, again influenced by Kerouac.
• See the mice in their million hordes From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads.
• Would you carry a razor, in case, just in case of depression?

David Bowie Quotes About Life

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

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

[While] my life started taking on all the problems of addiction. So that took me off into an area where relationships were absolutely impossible to handle on any real level. . . . Even communicating with other people was impossible. — David Bowie

I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players. — David Bowie

We see each other [ with Iman Abdulmajid] a lot. I couldn't stand to be separated 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. — David Bowie

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it's so essential that when I'm involved in the actual process, my so-called 'real life' becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying. — David Bowie

Pop stars are capable of growing old. Mick Jagger at 50 will be marvelous - a battered old roue - I can just see him. An aging rock star doesn't have to opt out life. When I'm 50, I'll prove it. — David Bowie

I don't like people probing into my life, so I reveal as little as possible or lie about it as much as need be so as to give them something to write about. — David Bowie

David Bowie Quotes About Love

In your fear, seek only peace. In your fear, seek only love. — David Bowie

Rebel, rebel, you've torn your dress. Rebel, rebel, your face is a mess. Rebel, rebel, how could they know? Hot tramp, I love you so. — David Bowie

They're the salt of the earth, those girls. They don't sit each night and compare notes on groups, criticising lyrics, asking if it's valid. They just play the record... yeah, and maybe they dance. I love them. I love them dearly — David Bowie

TV has eaten up everything else, and Warhol films are all that are left, which is fabulous. Pork could become the next I Love Lucy, the great American domestic comedy. It's about how people really live, not like Lucy, who never touched dishwater. It's about people living and hustling to survive. — David Bowie

I think every time I said, "I'm working with Nile [Rodgers]," the reaction was, "Oh, great. I love 'Let's Dance.' " I think that's pretty expected. I'm not sure Nile and I went in consciously not to make "Let's Dance." We just wanted to work together again. — David Bowie

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

It's not the side-effects of the cocaine - I'm thinking that it must be love. It's too late to be grateful, It's too late to be hateful, It's too late to be late again, The European cannon is here. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

It's not the side effects of the cocaine. . . . I'm thinking that it must be love. — David Bowie

For here, am I sitting in a tin can, far above the world. Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do... Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still - and I think my spaceship knows which way to go. Tell my wife I love her very much. — David Bowie

David Bowie Quotes About Art

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

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

Fame, what you like is in the Limo. Fame, what you get is no tomorrow. — David Bowie

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time. — David Bowie

Songwriting as an art is a bit archaic now. Just writing a song is not good enough. — David Bowie

I'll ruin everything you are, I'll give you television. — David Bowie

Illusion I will be, for I've never been a sinner. — David Bowie

If I put faith in medication, if I can smile a crooked smile, if I can talk on television, if I can walk an empty mile. — David Bowie

I've started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I'd be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

David Bowie Quotes About Work

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

Nearly all the synth work on Heathen is mine and some of the piano. — David Bowie

The best DJs in the world know how to pull in music from all over the place and make it work as a cohesive whole. — David Bowie

I don't mind trying it out and making sure something seems to work well. — David Bowie

I'm rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it's no longer his... I just see what people make of it. — David Bowie

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? — David Bowie

But I'm pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people. — David Bowie

David Bowie Quotes About 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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

Rock's always been the devil's music. — David Bowie

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

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I'm not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does. — David Bowie

You go through stages where you wonder whether you are Christ, or just looking for him. — David Bowie

Always drawn to the theatric, Bowie also performed in stage productions of "The Elephant Man" and just recently collaborated on "Lazarus," an off-Broadway musical that's a sequel to his 1976 role in the film "The Man Who Fell To Earth." — David Bowie

Rather than really have, like a close relationship to anything that's coming out today, people are just, they've got it on as background music. It's kind of the same way the cabdrivers use music; it's very disposable. — David Bowie

There was a time in America not long ago when rock 'n' roll was called race music, and white kids who wanted to go see Chuck Berry were completely forbidden. — David Bowie

I don't profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance. — David Bowie

David Bowie Quotes About People

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

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

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

It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

Since early middle ages when people generally taking away the barbarity of their like, were pretty content. Although it was all an illicit contentment, what with the slave systems all over the world, in England especially, the peasants and the master, etc. People were incredibly content. — David Bowie

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

The younger people get into the lyrics in a different way; there's much more of a tactile understanding, which is the way I prefer it. — 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

David Bowie Quotes About Songs

David Bowie emerged as a rock star in the late '60s. And as Ken Tucker wrote, "In the face of the hippy era's sincerity, intimacy and generosity, Bowie presented irony, distance and self-absorption. His song 'Changes' announced the arrival of a new counterculture," unquote. — David Bowie

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? — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

I've always tended to write songs prolifically. — David Bowie

These are all personal crises, I'm sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It's as simple as that. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

I thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing. And because nobody else was ever doing my songs, I felt - you know, I had to go out and do them. — David Bowie

David Bowie Quotes About Kind

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. — David Bowie

I guess a certain contingent of the musicians in London at the beginning of the '70s were fed up with denim and the hippies. And I think we kind of wanted to go somewhere else. — 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. — David Bowie

I think that we have created a new kind of person in a way. We have created a child who will be so exposed to the media that he will be lost to his parents by the time he is 12. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

I kind of miss that "becoming" stage, as most times you really don't know what's around the corner. Now, of course, I've kind of knocked on the door and heard a muffled answer. Nevertheless, I still don't know what the voice is saying, or even what language it's in. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

It's much easier for me to say that, the kind of music I didn't listen to was pretty much that. I mean everything, from jazz to classical to popular. And Tibetan horns were a great part of it in 1966, '67. — David Bowie

David Bowie Famous Quotes And Sayings

If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting. — David Bowie

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

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

It's true - I am a bisexual. But I can't deny that I've used that fact very well. I suppose it's the best thing that ever happened to me. — David Bowie

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

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

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

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

Strung out on lasers and slash back blazers. — David Bowie

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'. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth. — David Bowie

Speak in extremes, it'll save you time. — David Bowie

I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he's up there with Bryan Ferry. — David Bowie

Sits like a man, but smiles like a reptile. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

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

There's just some dysfunctionalism with artists. There are good things and bad things about being an artist, and the good thing is, sometimes you get an inside line on what's really happening. You develop these strange antennae that clue you in to what's really going on. — David Bowie

And I think my spaceship knows which way to go. — David Bowie

I find only freedom in the realms of eccentricity. — David Bowie

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! — David Bowie

In my madness I see your face in mine. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them. — David Bowie

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

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

I've never responded well to entrenched negative thinking. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

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? — David Bowie

For here Am I sitting in a tin can, Far above the world. Planet Earth is blue, And there's nothing I can do. — David Bowie

I got a bad migraine that lasted 3 years, and the pills I took made by fingers disappear. — David Bowie

It's only forever... Not long at all. — David Bowie

I'm drawn between the light and dark. — David Bowie

I'm a phallus in pigtails, and there's blood on my nose, and my tissue is rotting where the rats chew my bones. And my eye sockets empty, see nothing but pain, I keep having this brainstorm about twelve times a day. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

On "Tonight" I think I was torn dreadfully between writing what I wanted to write, but keeping it in a style that would follow up what I had just done. That's where I feel I was untrue to myself as an artist . . . that album and, to a lesser extent, "Never Let Me Down." — David Bowie

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human. — David Bowie

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

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

Trying to tart the rock business up a bit is getting nearer to what the kids themselves are like, because what I find, if you want to talk in the terms of rock, a lot depends on sensationalism and the kids are a lot more sensational than the stars themselves. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

Why bother choosing a certain chair? Because that chair says something about you. — David Bowie

I really believe that Bob Dylan and others have speeded up the changes. Pacifism has found a voice at last. — David Bowie

I'd rather stay here with all the madmen than perish with the sadmen roaming free. — 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

The only time that I've adopted characterization again since that point, for my own albums, has been an album called "Outside" that I did with Brian Eno. — David Bowie

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way. — David Bowie

I don't expect the human race to progress in too many areas. However, having a child with an ear infection makes one hugely grateful for antibiotics. — David Bowie

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. — David Bowie

Life Lessons by David Bowie

1. David Bowie taught us to be unafraid to take risks and push boundaries, both musically and aesthetically. He embraced change and challenged the status quo, inspiring us to be creative and think outside the box.
2. He showed us the power of collaboration, working with a variety of different musicians, producers, and artists to create something new and unique.
3. Bowie was a master of reinvention, constantly evolving and adapting his sound and style to stay relevant and ahead of the curve. He taught us to never be complacent and to always strive for growth and progress.