According to the science writer Philip Ball, when it was pointed out to musicologist Derick Cooke that Slavic and much Spanish music use minor keys for happy music, he claimed that their lives were so hard that they didn’t really know what happiness was anyway.

— David Byrne

Any kid will tell you that, yes, their music is both an escape and a survival mechanism, and that sometimes the music givesbthem hope and inspiration. It doesn't just placate and pacify.

— David Byrne

A soap opera character on the bar TV says, "You killed him, you smothered him with doughnuts!" Another character, another scene--she is sitting in a room with a man and an elderly woman--the leas character wonders if she's dead. The man says, No, you're alive," and the other woman hands her a plate of doughnuts. A commercial comes on. A couple is on a date and the woman's voice-over articulates interior thoughts of what a wonderful guy her friend has set her up with: "He's so cute, and his IQ is higher than my bank balance. . . But she didn't tell me he has. . . Tourette's syndrome.

— David Byrne

But at times words can be a dangerous addition to music — they can pin it down. Words imply that the music is about what the words say, literally, and nothing more. If done poorly, they can destroy the pleasant ambiguity that constitutes much of the reason we love music. That ambiguity allows listeners to psychologically tailor a song to suit their needs, sensibilities, and situations, but words can limit that, too. There are plenty of beautiful tracks that I can’t listen to because they’ve been “ruined” by bad words — my own and others. In Beyoncé's song "Irreplaceable," she rhymes "minute" with "minute," and I cringe every time I hear it (partly because by that point I'm singing along). On my own song "Astronaut," I wrap up with the line "feel like I'm an astronaut," which seems like the dumbest metaphor for alienation ever. Ugh.

— David Byrne

Complete freedom is as much curse as boon; freedom within strict and well-defined confines is, to me, ideal.

— David Byrne

Everyone was doing that in their own way, rejecting things and moving on. It's just a part of discovering who you are; it's nothing special.

— David Byrne

I also realized that there were lots of unacknowledged theater forms going on all around. Our lives are filled with performances that have been so woven into our daily routine that the artificial and performative aspect has slipped into invisibility.

— David Byrne

I don't care how impossible it seems.

— David Byrne

I don't listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don't have a car.

— 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