People use irony as a defense mechanism.
DAVID BYRNE Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and ...
DAVID BYRNE I certainly agree that putting everything into little genres is counterproductive. You're not go...
DAVID BYRNE Analysis is like a lobotomy. Who wants to have all their edges shaved off?
DAVID BYRNE I knew I wanted to have a doll of myself on the cover. I thought, I wanna see myself as a Ken doll.
DAVID BYRNE I've been in beautiful landscapes where one is tempted to whip out a camera and take a picture. ...
DAVID BYRNE That's the thing about pictures: they seduce you.
DAVID BYRNE Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their d...
DAVID BYRNE If anything, a lot of electronic music is music that no one listens to at home, hardly. It's rea...
DAVID BYRNE My favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food.
DAVID BYRNE On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the go...
DAVID BYRNE I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.
DAVID BYRNE The arts don't exist in isolation.
DAVID BYRNE There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide ex...
DAVID BYRNE Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.
DAVID BYRNE Do I wear a helmet? Ugh. I do when I'm riding through a precarious part of town, meaning Midtown...
DAVID BYRNE Cycling is a joy and faster than many other modes of transport, depending on the time of day. It cle...
DAVID BYRNE You can know or not know how a car runs and still enjoy riding in a car.
DAVID BYRNE You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.
DAVID BYRNE Cycling can be lonely, but in a good way. It gives you a moment to breathe and think, and get away f...
DAVID BYRNE Everything's intentional. It's just filling in the dots.
DAVID BYRNE Probably the reason it's a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you...
DAVID BYRNE That's the one for my tombstone... Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?
DAVID BYRNE The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood - rich, poor, old, young, decrepit...
DAVID BYRNE Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really...
DAVID BYRNE It didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Br...
DAVID BYRNE I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea-- do I have to choose between the two?
DAVID BYRNE Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and stil...
DAVID BYRNE As I define it, rock and roll is dead. The attitude isn't dead, but the music is no longer vital. It...
DAVID BYRNE To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.
DAVID BYRNE To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.
DAVID BYRNE I ride my bike almost every day here in New York. It's getting safer to do so, but I do have to ...
DAVID BYRNE People in Latin America... love America from afar and emulate America in some ways but also hate a l...
DAVID BYRNE It's not always been a happy marriage. I guess I wanted a quick fix.
DAVID BYRNE The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror - not the glamour and sophistication the pushe...
DAVID BYRNE Yeah, I like to keep myself interested - I'll kind of throw myself into some area that I don'...
DAVID BYRNE I pick up a copy of Newsweek on the plane and immediately notice how biased, slanted, and opinionate...
DAVID BYRNE I welcome the liberation of music from the prison of melody, rigid structure, and harmony. Why not? ...
DAVID BYRNE I'm very much into making lists and breaking things apart into categories.
DAVID BYRNE I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don't censor yourself, you end up with what you...
DAVID BYRNE I don't like begging money from producers.
DAVID BYRNE I wanted to be a secret agent and an astronaut, preferably at the same time.
DAVID BYRNE I'm no Lance Armstrong, but I do use a bike to get from place to place in Manhattan, a little bi...
DAVID BYRNE I'm not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartment...
DAVID BYRNE I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of of...
DAVID BYRNE I resent the implication that I'm less of a musician and a worse person for not appreciating cer...
DAVID BYRNE PowerPoint may not be of any use for you in a presentation, but it may liberate you in another way, ...
DAVID BYRNE Yeah, anybody can go in with two turntables and a microphone or a home studio sampler and a little c...
DAVID BYRNE Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, o...
DAVID BYRNE With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has e...
DAVID BYRNE Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don't sit and drool about it...
DAVID BYRNE Well, Marx is having a comeback. I hear him mentioned a lot in terms of the global financial situati...
DAVID BYRNE The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world's popular music is...
DAVID BYRNE Frank Lloyd Wright... his things were beautiful but not very functional.
DAVID BYRNE The physical sensation of gliding with the wind in your face is exhilarating. That automatic activit...
DAVID BYRNE Some artists and indie musicians see Spotify fairly positively - as a way of getting noticed, of get...
DAVID BYRNE All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.
DAVID BYRNE The consumers' trust has been eroded and the EU must restore public confidence in its food science a...
DAVID BYRNE There may be some amendments here or there, but as long as the proposal that has been announced rema...
DAVID BYRNE This is a major breakthrough that will provide consumers with much needed protection and rights,
DAVID BYRNE Consumers now clearly want copper-fastened guarantees that these controls are being implemented,
DAVID BYRNE I am an immigrant with a Green Card and, therefore, I am not eligible to vote in a federal election.
DAVID BYRNE I cycled when I was at high school, then reconnected with bikes in New York in the late '70s. It...
DAVID BYRNE I have no nostalgia for the location whatsoever. I appreciate what Hilly did. It's about his policy....
DAVID BYRNE Personally, being somewhat envious of Richard's songwriting and guitar playing, it's somewhat satisf...
DAVID BYRNE It is the price which must be paid to restore public confidence in our commitment to protect public ...
DAVID BYRNE I expect that we will achieve consensus on Monday,
DAVID BYRNE very foolish to underestimate the potential for the disease to spread.
DAVID BYRNE Language as a Prison

The Philippines did have a written language before the Spanis...
DAVID BYRNE I read the NY Times but I don't trust all of it.
DAVID BYRNE It's a very democratic instrument, everyone is reduced to the same amateur level.
DAVID BYRNE From what I've heard, Paris did a little bit more prep work as far as making bike lanes and all ...
DAVID BYRNE It's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't s...
DAVID BYRNE When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar pl...
DAVID BYRNE I encourage people not to be passive consumers of music and of culture in general. And feeling like,...
DAVID BYRNE I have trouble imagining what I could do that's beyond the practicality of what I can do.
DAVID BYRNE It was the best show I’d ever seen; it was so tight and choreographed that it seemed to be from an...
DAVID BYRNE I had grown up on Folkway's Nonesuch field recordings and the stuff Lomax had done for the Library o...
DAVID BYRNE Again,
DAVID BYRNE The iPod, like the Walkman cassette player before it,C allows us to listen to our music wherever we ...
DAVID BYRNE You might say that the universe plays the blues.
DAVID BYRNE temple and cathedral are attractive because they spatially and acoustically recreate the cave, where...
DAVID BYRNE Western music in the Middle Ages was performed in these stone-walled gothic cathedrals, and in archi...
DAVID BYRNE Music written by teams makes the authorship of a piece indistinct. Could it be that when hearing a s...
DAVID BYRNE In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they're...
DAVID BYRNE and echoes to my singing. More sounds went on—an arc-like melody created using an echo machine, an...
DAVID BYRNE I also realized that there were lots of unacknowledged theater forms going on all around. Our lives ...
DAVID BYRNE One forgets that part of one's performance is one's history—or sometimes the lack of it. You're pl...
DAVID BYRNE Sometimes it seems as if writing a group of songs is like getting groceries, or doing the laundry—...
DAVID BYRNE There is always a tradeoff. As music gets disseminated, and distinct regional voices find a way to b...
DAVID BYRNE how much of the audience’s fun was sacrificed in the effort to redefine the social parameters of t...
DAVID BYRNE The classical players who think all popular music is simple tend not to hear the nuances involved, s...
DAVID BYRNE Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects. When everythi...
DAVID BYRNE Something about music urges us to engage with its larger context, beyond the piece of plastic it cam...
DAVID BYRNE Performers try harder.
DAVID BYRNE People probably heard a greater quantity of music, and a greater variety, on these devices than they...
DAVID BYRNE My favorite term for a new kind of performance is "security theater." In this genre, we watch as rit...
DAVID BYRNE Musicians sort of knew this already—that the emotional center is not the technical center, that fu...
DAVID BYRNE Music resonates in so many parts of the brain that we can’t conceive of it being an isolated thing...
DAVID BYRNE I wanted to find a reason not to be cynical—to have some faith even when nothing around me seemed ...
DAVID BYRNE The act of making music, clothes, art, or even food has a very different, and possibly more benefici...
DAVID BYRNE But at times words can be a dangerous addition to music — they can pin it down. Words imply that t...
DAVID BYRNE Music isn't fragile.
DAVID BYRNE As music becomes less of a thing--a cylinder, a cassette, a disc--and more ephemeral, perhaps we wil...
DAVID BYRNE It can often seem that those in power don't want us to enjoy making things for ourselves - they'd pr...
DAVID BYRNE I've made money, and I've been ripped off. I've had creative freedom, and I've been ...
DAVID BYRNE I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing an...
DAVID BYRNE In retrospect, I can see I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started s...
DAVID BYRNE We need to find out more about the source of the disease before we can decide when to lift the ban,
DAVID BYRNE required an immediate response from the European Union.
DAVID BYRNE I need clarification of the measures which France intends to put in place to ensure that its beef ex...
DAVID BYRNE It's obvious that advertising pays, otherwise people wouldn't advertise -- so now we're getting on t...
DAVID BYRNE The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror -- not the glamour and sophistication the push...
DAVID BYRNE The proposals are essential for the enhancement of consumer confidence,
DAVID BYRNE We can say we're trying to reduce the risk to the minimum but there is no such thing as risk-free,
DAVID BYRNE The city is a body and a mind - a physical structure as well as a repository of ideas and informatio...
DAVID BYRNE Performing is a thing in itself, a distinct skill, different from making recordings. And for those w...
DAVID BYRNE In the early days, I might have gotten on stage and begun to sing as a desperate attempt to communic...
DAVID BYRNE Suburban houses and tin sheds are often the objects of ridicule.
DAVID BYRNE I subscribe to the myth that an artist's creativity comes from torment. Once that's fixed, w...
DAVID BYRNE I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it's a lot more fun hanging...
DAVID BYRNE In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and t...
DAVID BYRNE I wouldn't be surprised if poetry - poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled wit...
DAVID BYRNE Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects.
DAVID BYRNE Powerpoint presentations are a kind of theater, a kind of augmented stand-up. Too often it's a borin...
DAVID BYRNE A history of nightlife!--what an interesting concept. A history of a people, told not through their ...
DAVID BYRNE Winter is nature's way of saying, 'Up yours.'
ROBERT BYRNE I'm a product of my Irish culture, and I could no more lose that than I could my sense of identi...
GABRIEL BYRNE I think that if you can convey a kind of a complexity, a mystery, a truth in stillness, that, to me,...
GABRIEL BYRNE I thought to myself, there's a man who gave up his life to serve others - to touch people in tha...
GABRIEL BYRNE It was either Voltaire or Charlie Sheen who said, 'We are born alone. We live alone. We die alon...
GABRIEL BYRNE Presents don't really mean much to me. I don't want to sound mawkish, but - it was the reali...
GABRIEL BYRNE Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to fi...
GABRIEL BYRNE What is that song that Willie Nelson sang? 'Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few.' I ...
GABRIEL BYRNE I don't think we're living in great times for movies, to tell you the truth.
GABRIEL BYRNE And then, I suppose, there's also a cinematic reality on top of that. Because it was extremely d...
GABRIEL BYRNE Being listened to and being heard is an experience that doesn't happen terribly often. To listen...
GABRIEL BYRNE The Catholic Church is an innately conservative rock - they call themselves the 'rock of Peter&#...
GABRIEL BYRNE Corporations are the new dictators.
GABRIEL BYRNE We tend to think of extremes of emotions as registering, for example, you have to cry or laugh or ge...
GABRIEL BYRNE I would like to break out of this dark, brooding image, cause I'm actually not like that at all.
GABRIEL BYRNE I think there's a bit of the devil in everybody. There's a bit of a priest in everybody, too...
GABRIEL BYRNE A completely disrespectful photographer was asked to stop taking photographs, and then said, 'I&...
GABRIEL BYRNE Generally speaking, I don't think people know a great deal about the Viking culture, apart from ...
GABRIEL BYRNE It's actually pretty complex, because there's two levels of reality in the narrative. One is...
GABRIEL BYRNE I would love to go back to any time in European history, especially in Irish history, to the second ...
GABRIEL BYRNE Viking women were able to rule kingdoms, divorce husbands, own land; and Vikings were very progressi...
GABRIEL BYRNE Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours.".
ROBERT BYRNE Remember, if you are criticising, you are not being grateful. If you are blaming, you are not being ...
RHONDA BYRNE A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his lif...
ROBERT BYRNE The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
ROBERT BYRNE Until you walk a mile in another man's moccasins you can't imagine the smell.
ROBERT BYRNE Respect is love in plain clothes.
FRANKIE BYRNE There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on.
ROBERT BYRNE Collecting quotations is an insidious, even embarrassing habit, like ragpicking or hoarding rocks or...
ROBERT BYRNE I'm not a very gregarious person. I can't bear attention being called to me in a public place, which...
GABRIEL BYRNE Confidence is always overconfidence.
ROBERT BYRNE There is no accounting for taste and no taste for accounting.
KEVIN BYRNE Memorial Service: Farewell party for someone who already left.
ROBERT BYRNE Getting caught is the mother of invention.
ROBERT BYRNE Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life.
ROBERT BYRNE Our universities and museums are respected around the country.
JANE BYRNE I loved performing; I was always trying to impress my siblings by being a clown. I think that came f...
ROSE BYRNE We had similar situations with the Buffalo Bills and Chicago Bears and they responded quickly with o...
BILL BYRNE If you look at what we've got represented now on both the men's and women's side, we have some of th...
BILL BYRNE Coach Blair's team showed marked improvement last year and judging by the way his team is practicing...
BILL BYRNE Coach Blair's team showed marked improvement last year and judging by the way his team is practicing...
BILL BYRNE The priorities are keeping people out of dangerous situations and being able to help others who may ...
BILL BYRNE We have spent last couple of days reviewing many options about playing this football game. Our first...
BILL BYRNE We wanted to do what we could to help. We'll treat your athletes just like they were our own.
BILL BYRNE This is a program that can be successful in absolutely everything that we do. There are two flagship...
BILL BYRNE My goal is to make Texas A&M a destination. Billy is the perfect fit here. He's from Texas, his fami...
BILL BYRNE [Texas A&M was the highest-profile program that fell short in both football (887) and men's basketba...
BILL BYRNE I accept that responsibility and ask only that I be judged by my performance as its chief executive.
JANE BYRNE I am prepared to vote in support of a new military authorization that specifically authorizes U.S. m...
BRADLEY BYRNE I firmly believe a rising tide lifts all boats. I think having Airbus only grows and brings more att...
BRADLEY BYRNE Byrne's Law: In any electrical circuit, appliances and wiring will burn out to protect fuses.
ROBERT BYRNE Art, a book, a painting, a song, can definitely inspire change, whether it's a small change or a...
ROSE BYRNE There is no doubt ISIS poses a clear, direct threat to the United States, and decisive action is bad...
BRADLEY BYRNE Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
ROBERT BYRNE Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography.
ROBERT BYRNE Cogito ergo dim sum. (Therefore I think these are pork buns.)
ROBERT BYRNE Love will find a lay.
ROBERT BYRNE Nobody ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have while trying to write one.
ROBERT BYRNE Partying is such sweet sorrow.
ROBERT BYRNE In order to preserve your self-respect, it is sometimes necessary to lie and cheat.
ROBERT BYRNE Everything is in a state of flux, including the status quo.
ROBERT BYRNE Doing a thing well is often a waste of time.
ROBERT BYRNE Toymakers are bringing back proven hits because it's less risky than betting on something new.
CHRIS BYRNE O'Neill presents a very complex multi-layered kind of challenge. His characters are always deepl...
GABRIEL BYRNE When you're still, and some actors are really brilliant at that, you bring a kind of energy to y...
GABRIEL BYRNE Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography.
ROBERT BYRNE There's a lot of intensity when you're on a set. And then it just goes away and no one's...
ROSE BYRNE I attended the bedside of a friend who was dying in a Dublin hospital. She lived her last hours in a...
GABRIEL BYRNE We know very little about him and out of courtesy we have accepted his invitation to meet with us.
OLLIE BYRNE Memorial Service: Farewell party for someone who already left.
ROBERT BYRNE Online fundraising is so important to the Democratic Party.
JOHN BYRNE I had one of the best days of my life. I spent the afternoon with my two kids and my ex-wife at Sere...
GABRIEL BYRNE We'll have a great variety of items in the exhibit, including large coverlets, afghans, woven garmen...
JOAN BYRNE This sends a very clear message that we are committed to being in Santa Rosa.
PAT BYRNE