David Bowie

Funk, I don't think I have anything to do with funk. I've never considered myself funky.

I change my mind a lot. I usually don't agree with what I say very much. I'm an awful liar.

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?

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.

I'm not one of those guys that has a great worldview. I kind of deal with terror and fear and isolation and abandonment.

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.

Fame itself... doesn't really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant.

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn't really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn't have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

I've never responded well to entrenched negative thinking.

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.

Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It's because I'm not quite an atheist and it worries me. There's that little bit that holds on: 'Well, I'm almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.'

I couldn't have written things like 'Low' and 'Heroes,' those particular albums, if it hadn't have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.

I think in the '70s that there was a general feeling of chaos, a feeling that the idea of the '60s as 'ideal' was a misnomer. Nothing seemed ideal anymore. Everything seemed in-between.

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.

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.

I don't see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all inter-relate completely.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

You would think that a rock star being married to a supermodel would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.

I'm not very articulate.

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

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 wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home - I think in those days we called them arguments - about who was right and who was wrong.

I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.

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

I was never particularly fond of my voice.

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn't live past 30.

Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It's become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.

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.

Once I've written something it does tend to run away from me. I don't seem to have any part of it - it's no longer my piece of writing.

Frankly, if I could get away with not having to perform, I'd be very happy. It's not my favorite thing to do.

I never really felt like a rock singer or a rock star or whatever.

The Americans at heart are a pure and noble people; things to them are in black and white. It's either 'rawk' or it's not. We Brits putter around in the grey area.

I think Mustique is Duchampian - it will always provide an endless source of delight.

The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic, nihilistic.

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

Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.

But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him.

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

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.

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

I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir.

I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.

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

I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on.

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.

Even though I was very shy, I found I could get onstage if I had a new identity.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That's what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.