108 Best David Bowie Quotes About Love, Life And Art
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David Bowie was a legendary singer and actor who is considered one of the greatest rock stars and musical artists.
The music and fashion icon was famous for experimenting with different styles of music throughout his career. He also had a notable alter-ego called Ziggy Stardust.
David Bowie, who originally went by the name Davy Jones, got his stage name from American pioneer James Bowie and the knife he always carried. He has inspired people through his eccentric approach to music and life.
His most famous hits include 'Space Oddity', 'The Man Who Changed The World', and 'Changes'. Arguably, 'Life On Mars' was his biggest hit. Sadly, in 2016, Bowie passed away.
These quotes are the outcome of the wisdom he shared. David Bowie quotes from 'Labyrinth' are also very popular. Previously, we shared quote articles about [Queen quotes] and The Beatles quotes, today we have some of the best David Bowie quotes on life and David Bowie song quotes for you.
Best David Bowie Quotes
Some of the best David Bowie quotes and wise words. David Bowie quotes about fame and life are truly eye-opening.
1. “Robert Johnson only had one album’s worth of work as his legacy. That’s all that life allowed him.”
- David Bowie.
2. “I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.”
- David Bowie.
3. “Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.”
- David Bowie.
4. “Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.”
- David Bowie.
5. “I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.”
- David Bowie.
6. “I find only freedom in the realms of eccentricity.”
- David Bowie.
7. “The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.”
- David Bowie.
8. “I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.”
- David Bowie.
9. "I’m an awful liar."
- David Bowie.
10. “All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity.”
- David Bowie.
11. “Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.”
- David Bowie.
12. “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.
13. “I believe that I often bring out the best in somebody’s talents.”
- David Bowie.
14. “Speak in extremes, it’ll save you time. ”
- David Bowie.
15. “I’m an instant star. Just add water and stir.”
- David Bowie.
16. “I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.”
- David Bowie.
17. “Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true.”
- David Bowie.
18. “I’m just an individual who doesn’t feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way.”
- David Bowie.
19. “Age doesn’t bother me.”
- David Bowie.
20. “I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way.”
- David Bowie.
21. “I’m well past the age where I’m acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access.”
- David Bowie.
22. “Now I realize that from '72 through to about '76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn't have been more rock star.”
- David Bowie.
23. “Fame is a very luxuriant mental hospital.”
- David Bowie.
Popular David Bowie Quotes And Sayings
Here are the most famous David Bowie quotes. These include his famous quotes about music and life too.
24. “I would love to feel that what I did actually changed the fabric of music.”
- David Bowie.
25. “I have a certain niche that I work in. A lot of it has to be about alienation. Being on the outside of things. That tends to be where I feel more comfortable as a writer.”
- David Bowie.
26. “Trust nothing but your own experience.”
- David Bowie.
27. “I’d love people to believe that I really had great haircuts.”
- David Bowie.
28. “What a disappointing 21st century this has been so far.”
- David Bowie.
29. “Gentleness clears the soul, love cleans the mind and makes it free.”
- David Bowie.
30. "I change my mind a lot. I usually don’t agree with what I say very much."
- David Bowie.
31. “Once you lose that sense of wonder at being alive, you’re pretty much on the way out.”
- David Bowie.
32. “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.
33. “I’m always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don’t even take what I am seriously.”
- David Bowie.
34. “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.
35. “There's a terror in knowing what the world is about.
- David Bowie.
36. “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.
37. “There's a taste in my mouth and it's no taste at all.”
- David Bowie.
38. “The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”
- David Bowie.
39. “The moment you know you know you know.”
- David Bowie.
40. “Every time I've made a radical change it's helped me feel buoyant as an artist.”
- David Bowie.
41. “Turn and face the strange changes.”
- David Bowie.
42. “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.”
- David Bowie.
43. “The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.”
- David Bowie.
44. “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 play everybody.”
- David Bowie.
45. “Make the best of every moment. We’re not evolving. We’re not going anywhere.”
- David Bowie.
46. “Funk, I don’t think I have anything to do with funk. I’ve never considered myself funky.”
- David Bowie.
David Bowie Quotes About Life
Here are the greatest David Bowie quotes about life.
47. “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.”
- David Bowie.
48. “The only real failure is trying to second-guess the taste of an audience. Nothing comes out of that except a kind of inward humiliation.”
- David Bowie.
49. “I think my spaceship knows which way to go.”
- David Bowie.
50. “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.
51. “All I have is my love of love and love is not loving.”
- David Bowie.
52. “You can neither win or lose if you don’t run the race.”
- David Bowie.
53. “You can't stand still on one point for your entire life.”
- David Bowie.
54. “People look to me to see what the spirit of the Seventies is.”
- David Bowie.
55. “The media is either our salvation or our death.”
- David Bowie.
56. “It would be positively boring if minds were in tune.”
- David Bowie.
57. “The end comes when the infinites arrive.”
- David Bowie.
58. “I'm not at ease with the word 'love.'”
- David Bowie.
59. “When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.”
- David Bowie.
60. “When I’m stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.”
- David Bowie.
61. “I don’t see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all inter-relate completely."
- David Bowie.
62. “Even though I was very shy, I found I could get onstage if I had a new identity.”
- David Bowie.
63. “I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement – it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original.”
- David Bowie.
64. “I never really felt like a rock singer or a rock star or whatever.”
- David Bowie.
65. “I feel confident imposing change on myself. It's a lot more fun progressing than looking back. That's why I need to throw curveballs.”
- David Bowie.
66. “I've never responded well to entrenched negative thinking.”
- David Bowie.
67. “Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity.”
- David Bowie.
68. “Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write.”
- David Bowie.
69. “But I'm pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people.”
- David Bowie.
70. “I was never particularly fond of my voice.”
- David Bowie.
71. “I’m very good at what I do, and I don’t turn my hand to something unless I’m very good at it, frankly.”
- David Bowie.
72. “I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players.”
- David Bowie.
73. “Fame itself… doesn’t really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant.”
- David Bowie.
74. “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.”
- David Bowie.
75. “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.”
- David Bowie.
76. “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.”
- David Bowie.
77. “You feel you have negated everything that is wonderful about life. When you have fallen that far, it feels like a miracle when you regain your love of life.”
- David Bowie.
Inspiring David Bowie Quotes
Check out these thought-provoking David Bowie quotes to inspire you.
78. “Everything we look at and choose is some way of expressing how we want to be perceived.”
- David Bowie.
79. “If you come from art, you'll always be art.”
- David Bowie.
80. “In your fear, seek only peace. In your fear, seek only love.”
- David Bowie.
81. “I'm drawn between the light and dark.”
- David Bowie.
82. “Don't let me hear you say life takes you nowhere, angel.”
- David Bowie, 'Golden Years'.
83. “I’ll paint you moments of gold, I’ll spin you Valentine evenings.”
- David Bowie, 'As The World Falls Down'.
84. “It’s always time to question what has become standard and established.”
- David Bowie.
85. “Nobody reads anymore, nobody goes out and looks and explores the society and culture they were brought up in.”
- David Bowie.
86. “People have attention spans of five seconds and as much depth as a glass of water.”
- David Bowie.
87. “Offstage I’m a robot. On stage, I achieve emotion. It’s probably why I prefer dressing up as Ziggy to being David.”
- David Bowie.
88. “Talking about art is like dancing about architecture.”
- David Bowie.
89. “To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.”
- David Bowie.
90. “I’m responsible for starting a whole new school of pretension.”
- David Bowie.
91. “If it works, it’s out of date.”
- David Bowie.
92. “As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.”
- David Bowie.
93. “I don’t care what anybody says; I like doing it, and it’s what I shall continue to do.”
- David Bowie.
94. “I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it.”
- David Bowie.
95. “Pop stars are capable of growing old... An aging rock star doesn’t have to opt out life. When I’m 50, I’ll prove it...”
- David Bowie.
96. “I don’t make changes to confuse anyone. I’m just searching. That’s what causes me to change. I’m just searching for myself.”
- David Bowie.
97. “I think hip-hop is actually one of the most challenging things that’s happened in music in a long time.”
- David Bowie.
98. “A career of nearly 40 years, is not very long.”
- David Bowie.
99. “A lot of people provide me with quotes. They suggest all kinds of things to say and I do, really, because I’m not very hip at all.”
- David Bowie.
100. “Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.”
- David Bowie.
David Bowie Quotes From His Songs
You'll love these best David Bowie quotes inspired by his songs.
101. “And you, you can be mean. And I, I’ll drink all the time. Cause we’re lovers, and that is a fact. Yes, we’re lovers, and that is that.”
- David Bowie, ‘Heroes’.
102. “Keep your electric eye on me babe. Put your ray gun to my head. Press your space face close to mine, love. Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah.”
- David Bowie, ‘Moonage Daydream’.
103. “I know when to go out, know when to stay in. Get things done.”
- David Bowie, ‘Modern Love’.
104. “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.”
- David Bowie, ‘Changes’.
105. “Look up here, I’m in heaven. I’ve got scars that can’t be seen. I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen. Everybody knows me now.”
- David Bowie, ‘Lazarus’.
106. “We live closer to the earth, never to the heavens. The stars are never far away. Stars are out tonight.”
- David Bowie, ‘The Stars Are Out Tonight’.
107. “We can be heroes, just for one day.”
- David Bowie, ‘Heroes’.
108. “I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I’m living on.”
- David Bowie, ‘Quicksand’.
Our team at Kidadl, has crafted interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our quote suggestion for the best David Bowie quotes about love, life and art, then take a look at these Stevie Nicks quotes and Bruce Springsteen quotes too?
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Martha is a full-time creative writer, content strategist, and aspiring screenwriter who communicates complex thoughts and ideas effectively. She has completed her Bachelor's in Linguistics from Nasarawa State University. As an enthusiast of public relations and communication, Martha is well-prepared to substantially impact your organization as your next content writer and strategist. Her dedication to her craft and commitment to delivering high-quality work enables her to create compelling content that resonates with audiences.
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