Bowie Quotes

Without David Bowie, popular music as we know it pretty much wouldn't exist.

I grew up in Deptford in south London, and at that time I used to wear toppers, loon pants and tonic suits from shops like Take 6 and Topman. I was a bit of a soul boy, but I had a very eclectic taste in music - I was into James Brown and Bowie; and I was the only kid in the neighbourhood who would also be listening to Chopin.

This is a mad planet," David Bowie said in 1971. "It's doomed to madness.

Bowie's a real man, and I'm a real woman - just like Catherine Deneuve.

I'm from the same planet as David Bowie.

Everyone wants to pretend like they sprang out of the ground with an Animal Collective record in their hands and a David Bowie haircut, and that's just not the case. You discover these things gradually.

David Bowie, for me, was the butchest guy in town. Jagger was like a truck driver.

David Bowie told me my music sounds like tomorrow

It depends who they are. If it's Mick (Jagger) or the Old Guard as I call them, yeah, they're the Old Guard. Elton (John), David (Bowie) are the newies. I don't feel like an old uncle, dear, 'cause I'm not that much older than half of 'em, hehe.

As a teenager I was crazy about David Bowie. He was a huge inspiration for me. I dressed a little bit crazily in school and dyed my hair every colour under the sun.

When I was about 13, 14 - 13, I would carry a magic marker with me everywhere I went so I could write the word "Bowie" on everything that wasn't mine.

I was looking at people like Jim Morrison and David Bowie and Mick Jagger and I thought, Ah! I want to look like them.

I listen to a lot of old music, like Joni Mitchell and David Bowie.

A lot of my male vocal influences are British - people like David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Robert Plant.

David Bowie really played with ideas, and iconography and imagery. He's brilliant man. And a gentleman, too.

Lady Gaga is proof that David Bowie raped Carol Burnett.

Some references are more important than others. Like the metal stuff. Some people like Motley Crue and some people didn't listen to them at all. So that's why there's New Order and The New Replacements and David Bowie and Public Enemy.

I went to glam shows and was inspired by Bowie.

I love people like Kate Bush and Stevie Nicks and David Bowie - people that project themselves as characters and that contextualizes the music.

David Bowie used to cover loads of people, and there was an element of "David Bowie did it, so we wanted to do it," because we're kind of obsessed [with him].

Bowie's death is a very emotional thing. My generation of working-class Britain, it feels like we lost our spiritual leader, our guru. I always thought that if I was to be a hundred, somehow Bowie would be a hundred and fifteen. He'd be there to still steer me and guide me.

Have an objective to give your bender a theme. For instance, stalking and killing a wild pig with a bowie knife.

I'm very curious about David Bowie's new record [2016]. I'm very, very... I'm just incredibly curious, I want to see what's happening with that. I don't really know who else is putting out records, we've had our heads buried working on ours. I haven't really been paying much attention lately.

Prince didn't want to sound like Michael Jackson. Neither of them wanted to sound like Luther Vandross. They didn't want to sound like David Bowie. They were all different, but brilliant.

I knew about things like Iggy Pop and The Velvet Underground, weirdly, before I knew about David Bowie. I didn't know what David Bowie was, when I was a kid. I thought he was like Visage.

Hearing that [David] Bowie passed was like you don't really believe it. It's as if the sky shifted a little bit, to remind you it was there.

Working with David Bowie was very interesting, but I couldn't surrender to it. I should have let him produce a record for me, but I'm very perverse in some ways. He's brilliant, but the entourage were rather daunting.

Just as Bowie, Zeppelin, etc., became rock stars by remaking themselves in the image of the California girls, the Go-Gos became rock stars by pretending to be the Buzzcocks and the Sex Pistols. Jane Wiedlin always said her biggest influence was growing up in L.A. as a Bowie girl.

Bethann Hardison has been my collaborator, my closest friend, we've gone through starting businesses, losing businesses, kids, divorces, marriages, and she was my maid of honor when I married my husband, David Bowie. And she's still such a part of my life. This is the person when it's totally dark, outside and inside, this is the person I would call.

I always knew there were vampires, dude,” he’d said. “Because, you know how there’s people you know who, like, always look the same, even when they’re, like, a hundred years old? Like David Bowie? That’s because they’re vampires.

So asking you to take a moonlit walk with me, that would totally not work?" "What?" Again that glare. "Go away. Stop being an idiot. I don't even know you." "You're healing my little brother Bowie." "Yeah, that doesn't make us friends, kid." "So no moonlight." "Are you retarded?" "Sunrise? I could get up early." "Go away." "Sunset tomorrow?" -Sanjit & Lana

I saw Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, which I thought was a masterpiece. Not that long ago, I listened to Blackstar by David Bowie and thought that was a masterpiece. Those are two incredibly talented people who've left their mark with us.

If anybody won life, David Bowie did, at least as a creative entity in the sense of writing yourself into existence and writing yourself out in such a graceful swoop.

Bowie's obviously my biggest influence.

David Bowie is the quintessential English gentleman and, of course, a musical and generational institution. I only played support for him for one night (not a whole tour) but he was incredibly gracious and generous toward me and I've certainly never forgotten it.

As a kid, I would've loved to get a tweet from David Bowie or Joan Rivers or Tom Cruise. It's great that you can communicate with people and it's instant.

When I was around Bowie, I was nearing the bottom. When we were touring together, I looked at him as a kind of big-brother figure and I also looked at him as somebody I had a lot of respect for. The age and the period he's at in his life, I'd like to be there some day. He has a kind of content peace about him that's something to shoot for.

I went down to London with the idea that I was going to do vocals over this crazy, crazy trip-hop digital beat. Within two or three months, I heard Hunky Dory by David Bowie and that changed me in one way, and I realized what I actually wanted was to have an E Street Band - individuals, not session musicians.

I would probably say David Bowie and Prince are the perfect people. They dress feminine/masculine and they're really sexy. Not many people can wear high heels and look sexier than a woman!

[David] Bowie's last album "Blackstar" featured him backed by a jazz quartet.

I need to do a concert to celebrate David Bowie's electronic music. And in so doing, I'm not taking a step back, I'm taking a step forward and presenting it in its entirety so people can understand this type of visionary.

David Bowie's music is a moving target. Just when you think you got the bullseye, it shifts. And to his credit, on to death, it's still shifting. David Bowie is a moving target, even after he's gone.

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."

I'm not David Bowie. Who are we kidding? At the end of the day, I'm the same person I've always been. I'm Don Garvey's son from up the road.

Some people say Bowie is all surface style and second-hand ideas, but that sounds like a definition of pop to me.

When I was 8 years old, I made my own encyclopedia of American biography - Johnny Appleseed, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Charles Lindbergh, my pantheon of favorite heroes. Then I would write my own things and sew them together and try to make my own book.

I am impressed by the way Annie Kevans captured the different types of beauties that have been my inspiration and my muses from my grandmother to artists like David Bowie and Boy George.

You can not ignore his current life. Bowie has become a family man and enjoys to see his children grow up close to him. But after six years he feels the urge to get in the studio with musicans he likes. He closely follows bands like Arcade Fire in recent months. But he is inspired by ancient Chinese folk and jazz these days as well.

It's a miracle that David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop are actually still alive today, given how hard they lived.

My family knew I was gay when I was 15, long before I got famous. But it's a very different thing coming out to your family and coming out to the universe. That's a big step. Maybe without me, there wouldn't be Adam Lambert. Without Bowie, there wouldn't be me. Without Quentin Crisp, there wouldn't have been Bowie. So everything is part of a big daisy chain.