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Maybe It's Naïve, But I Would Love To Believe That Once You Grow To Love Some Aspect Of A Culture-its Music, For Instance -you Can Never Again Think Of The People Of That Culture As Less Than Yourself. I Would Like To Believe That If I Am Deeply Moved By A Song Originating From Some Place Other Than My Own Homeland, Then I Have In Some Way Shared An Experience With The People Of That Culture. I Have Been Pleasantly Contaminated. I Can Identify In Some Small Way With It And Its People.

-David Byrne

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Maybe It's Naïve, But

David Byrne

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Maybe It's Naïve, But I Would Love To Believe That Once You Grow To Love Some Aspect Of A Culture-its Music, For Instance -you Can Never Again Think Of The People Of That Culture As Less Than Yourself. I Would Like To Believe That If I Am Deeply Moved By A Song Originating From Some Place Other Than My Own Homeland, Then I Have In Some Way Shared An Experience With The People Of That Culture. I Have Been Pleasantly Contaminated. I Can Identify In Some Small Way With It And Its People.

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Life Tends To Be An Accumulation Of A Lot Of Mundane Decisions, Which Often Gets Ignored.

Yeah, It's Pretty Hard Not To Be Completely Cynical These Days.

Living "in" A Story, Being Part Of A Narrative, Is Much More Satisfying Than Living Without One. I Don't Always Know What Narrative It Is, Because I'm Living My Life And Not Always Reflecting On It, But As I Edit These Pages I Am Aware That I Have An Urge To See My Sometimes Random Wandering As Having A Plot, A Purpose Guided By Some Underlying Story.

Personally, Being Somewhat Envious Of Richard's (thompson) Songwriting And Guitar Playing, It's Somewhat Satisfying He's Not Yet Achieved Household-name Status. It Serves Him Right For Being So Good.

I Think It's Really Hard To Make Songs That Pursue An Agenda. You Can Kind Of Do It A Little Bit Through A Character, So The Character Gives Voice To Something Or Their Story, The Story Of The Character Tells You Something, But, For Me Anyway, It's Really Hard To Write Directly About Politics.

I Don't Think I Have Grand Visions That I Will Never Achieve.

I Have Something To Say About The Difference Between American And European Cities, But I Forgot What It Was. I Have It Written Down At Home Somewhere.

People Will Do Odd Things If You Give Them Money.

This Ain't No Party, This Ain't No Disco, This Ain't No Fooling Around.

Probably The Reason It's A Little Hard To Break Away From The Album Format Completely Is, If You're Getting A Band Together In The Studio, It Makes Financial Sense To Do More Than One Song At A Time. And It Makes More Sense, If You're Going To All The Effort Of Performing And Doing Whatever Else, If There's A Kind Of Bundle.

Cycling Is A Joy And Faster Than Many Other Modes Of Transport, Depending On The Time Of Day. It Clears The Head.

I Came To New York To Be A Fine Artist - That Was My Ambition.

Analysis Is Like A Lobotomy. Who Wants To Have All Their Edges Shaved Off?

I've Noticed That When I Am Selling A Lot Of Records, Certain Things Become Easier. I'm Not Talking About Getting A Table In A Restaurant.

I Try To Write About Small Things. Paper, Animals, A House... Love Is Kind Of Big. I Have Written A Love Song, Though. In This Film, I Sing It To A Lamp.

I Don't Care How Impossible It Seems.

I'm Afraid That Everything Will Get Homogenized And Be The Same

I Like A Good Story And I Also Like Staring At The Sea-- Do I Have To Choose Between The Two?

I've Rarely Kept My Distance From Kind Of - I Don't Know If We Can Call It Politics, But Kind Of, Civic Engagement And That Kind Of Thing, Except I Tended To Think, 'well, Do It Yourself Before You Start Telling Other People What They Should Be Doing.'

I Sense The World Might Be More Dreamlike, Metaphorical, And Poetic Than We Currently Believe--but Just As Irrational As Sympathetic Magic When Looked At In A Typically Scientific Way. I Wouldn't Be Surprised If Poetry--poetry In The Broadest Sense, In The Sense Of A World Filled With Metaphor, Rhyme, And Recurring Patterns, Shapes, And Designs--is How The World Works. The World Isn't Logical, It's A Song.

The Better A Singer's Voice, The Harder It Is To Believe What They're Saying.

We Are Like The Birds. We Adapt. We Sing.

When Things Get So Absurd And So Stupid And So Ridiculous That You Just Can't Bear It, You Cannot Help But Turn Everything Into A Joke.

Real Beauty Knocks You A Little Bit Off Kilter.

Facts Are Simple And Facts Are Straight. Facts Are Lazy And Facts Are Late. Facts All Come With Points Of View. Facts Don't Do What I Want Them To. Facts Just Twist The Truth Around. Facts Are Living Turned Inside Out.

Singing Is A Trick To Get People To Listen To Music For Longer Than They Would Ordinarily.

Punk. . .was More A Kind Of Do-it-yourself, Anyone-can-do-it Attitude. If You Only Played Two Notes On The Guitar, You Could Figure Out A Way To Make A Song Out Of That, And That's What It Was All About.

You Can Know Or Not Know How A Car Runs And Still Enjoy Riding In A Car.

I Like To Combine The Dramatic Emotional Warmth Of Strings With The Grooves And Body Business Of Drums And Bass.

Ninety Percent Of All Music Is Always Crap, And When Too Many People Decide They're Going To Have Guitar Bands, Then Ninety Percent Of Them Are Going To Be Crap. It's Just A Given Law.

Powerpoint May Not Be Of Any Use For You In A Presentation, But It May Liberate You In Another Way, An Artistic Way. Who Knows.

Sometimes I Write Stuff That Strangely Predicts What's Going To Happen In My Life.

The Wage For Most Musicians Is A Modest Amount, And That Includes Me Some Of The Time.

Body Odor Is The Window To The Soul.

Window To The Soul

Technology Has Altered The Way Music Sounds, How It’s Composed And How We Experience It. It Has Also Flooded The World With Music. The World Is Awash With (mostly) Recorded Sounds. We Used To Have To Pay For Music Or Make It Ourselves; Playing, Hearing And Experiencing It Was Exceptional, A Rare And Special Experience. Now Hearing It Is Ubiquitous, And Silence Is The Rarity That We Pay For And Savor.

I Love Getting Out Of My Comfort Zone.

With A Lot Of What We Take To Be True Feelings, Especially On Pop Records, We Feel Them Because They're Cleverly Crafted. And Because The Words Are Written By Somebody Who Knows How To Craft Words And Draw On Those Things And Convey Those Feelings. That Doesn't Mean They're Dishonest. But It Also Doesn't Mean That It's All Just Pure Primitive Emotion Spilling Out.

I've Been In Beautiful Landscapes Where One Is Tempted To Whip Out A Camera And Take A Picture. I've Learned To Resist That.

You Create A Community With Music, Not Just At Concerts But By Talking About It With Your Friends.

I Can't Tell One From The Other:i Find You Or You Find Me?there Was A Time Before We Were Born If Someone Asks, This Is Where I'll Be.

Punk Was Defined By An Attitude Rather Than A Musical Style.

I Knew I Wanted To Have A Doll Of Myself On The Cover. I Thought, I Wanna See Myself As A Ken Doll.

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On A Bike, Being Just Slightly Above Pedestrian And Car Eye Level, One Gets A Perfect View Of The Goings-on In One's Own Town.

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Emotional Turmoil

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The Heads Were The Only Band On That Scene That Had A Groove.

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I Always Think The Everyday Is More Relevant Than Anything Too Grand Because We All Have To Deal With It.

My Favorite Term For A New Kind Of Performance Is "security Theater." In This Genre, We Watch As Ritualized Inspections And Patdowns Create The Illusion Of Security. It's A Form That Has Become Common Since 9/11, And Even The Government Agencies That Participate In This Activity Acknowledge,off The Record, That It Is Indeed A Species Of Theater.

Things Fall Apart, It's Scientific.

Suburban Houses And Tin Sheds Are Often The Objects Of Ridicule.

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The World Isn't Logical, It's A Song.

There Are Plenty Of People Who Are, I Think, Completely Racist Who Love Hip-hop.

The Very Best [infographics] Engender And Facilitate An Insight By Visual Means - Allow Us To Grasp Some Relationship Quickly And Easily That Otherwise Would Take Many Pages And Illustrations And Tables To Convey. Insight Seems To Happen Most Often When Data Sets Are Crossed In The Design Of The Piece - When We Can Quickly See The Effects On Something Over Time, For Example, Or View How Factors Like Income, Race, Geography, Or Diet Might Affect Other Data. When That Happens, There's An Instant "aha!".

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Some Things, I Feel Like No, I Never Could Have The Depth Of Experience Of Their Own Music And Culture - But Sometimes If I'm Collaborating With Somebody, They're Interested In Me Bringing My Own Stuff Into Their Thing, And Sometimes That Works.

Human Beings Have The Incredible Capacity For Denial. I Think They Do. And Although It's Really Hard To Believe, I Have My Doubts. But My Feeling Is That First They Have To Convince Themselves. First They Have To Justify This Stuff To Themselves And If They Can Do That, Even For Just The Moment That It's Coming Out Their Mouth, Then They Can Kind Of Mouth It With Kind Of Believable Sincerity, Even If Some Of Us.

Real Sadness Is Such An All-encompassing Intense Thing That It Takes You Out Of Your Humdrum Existence. If You Can Still Function, You Want To Show It While It's Peaking. So When People Tell You To Cheer Up, It's Not Always The Best Thing.

You May Say To Yourself: "well, How Did I Get Here?"

The Arts Don't Exist In Isolation.

With Music, You Often Don't Have To Translate It. It Just Affects You, And You Don't Know Why.

It's More About The Stuff You Think About When You're Getting From Place To Place On A Bicycle Than It Is About Actually Riding The Bicycle.

So There's No Guarantee If You Like The Music You Will Empathize With The Culture And The People Who Made It. It Doesn't Necessarily Happen. I Think It Can, But It Doesn't Necessarily Happen. Which Is Kind Of A Shame.

Most Of Our Lives Aren't That Exciting, But The Drama Is Still Going On In The Small Details.

My Favorite Time Of Day Is To Get Up And Eat Leftovers From Dinner, Especially Spicy Food.

Always Be Skeptical About Simplicity.

When It Became Easy Enough To Do Dairy Online, Then I Just Thought, "oh, I'll Start Doing This. I'll Put The Parts Online That Aren't Going To Get Me In Trouble. I'll Save The Rest For Myself." It Became Also This Kind Of Self-therapy. I Could Write About Stuff That Was Bothering Me, Or Personal Stuff. And The Very Personal Stuff I Could Edit Out. But It Was Kind Of The Catharsis Of Getting It Out And Writing About It, That Made Me Think, "okay, I See Why People Do This, Why They Keep These Diaries." So I Thought, "well, Let's See What Happens When I Post Some Of It."

We're On A Road To Nowhere, Come On Inside. Takin' That Ride To Nowhere, We'll Take That Ride. I'm Feelin' Okay This Mornin', And You Know, We're On The Road To Paradise, Here We Go, Here We Go.

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Sometimes The European And North American Public Like Some Things To Be Exotic And Kept At Arm's Length. They Don't Want Sometimes To Know That Foreign Artists Are Doing Something That's At Least As Relevant As What's Being Done Here.

I Don't Like Begging Money From Producers.

Yeah, I Like To Keep Myself Interested - I'll Kind Of Throw Myself Into Some Area That I Don't Completely Know Or Understand, That I'm Not Adept At, So I'm Forced To Swim In Order To Stay Afloat. There's A Good Feeling That Comes From That.

I've Rarely Seen Video Screens Used Well In A Music Concert.

I Couldn't Take Pictures Of Green Rolling Hills.

There's An Old Joke That You Know You're In Heaven If The Cooks Are Italian And The Engineering Is German. If It's The Other Way Around You're In Hell.

I Wave To The Double-decker Buses From My Bike, But The Passengers Never Wave Back. Why? Am I Not An Attraction?

It's Not Always Been A Happy Marriage. I Guess I Wanted A Quick Fix.

A Little Touch Of Chaos And Danger Makes A City Sexy.

Software Constraints Are Only Confining If You Use Them For What They're Intended To Be Used For.

I Subscribe To The Myth That An Artist's Creativity Comes From Torment. Once That's Fixed, What Do You Draw On?

I Find Rebellion Packaged By A Major Corporation A Little Hard To Take Seriously.

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Chuck Palahniuk

John W. Gardner

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