The 90 best phrases (and reflections) of David Bowie

David Robert Jones, known worldwide as David Bowie, was a British singer-songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, and designer, who was characterized not only by his immense talent, but by his extravagant performances on stage and his revolutionary wardrobe, where he showed us that clothes have no sex.

• We recommend you read: "The 80 best phrases (and reflections) of Elvis Presley"

Best David Bowie Quotes

To learn more about his artistic and personal life, we bring you a compilation with David Bowie's best quotes and reflections.

1. I believe that an artist must always be faithful to the dictates of his heart.

What for Bowie it was to be a true artist.

2. I've been putting out the fire with gasoline.

Many try to get out of their problems, through unhealthy ways.

3. Fame can have interesting men and push mediocrity over them.

Just because someone is successful doesn't mean they are a good person.

4. I'm the luckiest guy in the world, not the loneliest.

The loneliness that weighs the most is when we cannot be well with ourselves.

5. Just because you believe doesn't mean you don't think things through.

Nothing he did was by chance.

6. You don't have to question all things in heaven or in hell.

Overthinking brings us more anxiety than necessary.

7. Everything is learned from failure.

Failure leaves us valuable lessons as long as we learn to read them.

8. The only real mistake is trying to go along with the taste of the audience. The only thing it produces is a kind of internal humiliation.

If David Bowie was proud of anything, it was being himself and being different from others.

9. Fame in and of itself gets you nothing more than a good location in a restaurant.

Not always, fame brings completely good things.

10. I don't see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all fully relate.

For Bowie, art was something complete, in all its branches.

11. There are half a dozen themes that I return to time and time again... and that doesn't bother me.

If you like something, why not repeat it?

12. There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. Words just make it more joyful.

The music is where the real message that I wanted to convey to the world was.

13. When he was a teenager, he was painfully shy, withdrawn.

Can you imagine a shy David Bowie?

14. What I like to do is try to make a difference with the work that I do.

Being different is what allows us to be original.

15. Tomorrow only belongs to those who can hear it coming.

The future belongs to whoever takes the reins of his life.

16. I had to resign myself, many years ago, to not being too eloquent when it comes to explaining what I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

Many artists find in his creations the best way to express themselves.

17. There was a time when rock singers believed we were gods and thought that we were going to be able to change the world.

In the 1970s and 1980s, rock was the music that ruled the world.

18. I know I have to be a different man, but I just can't find my time.

In all the time that he was active, Bowie had great detractors due to his appearance.

19. What I do is not very intellectual. I'm a pop singer for God's sake, I'm pretty straightforward.

Bowie didn't think there was anything complex about his style of music.

20. Questioning my spiritual life has always been akin to what I was writing about.

Many people find their own way over their personal beliefs.

21. I can't let someone take care of my things, I find that I am the one who can best understand my world.

You can have support from people who help you, but your life should only be managed by you.

22. Searching for music is like searching for God. They are very similar.

A religious experience.

23. Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who have been there.

You don't need to follow a religion to have a spiritual connection.

24. I am working for myself.

The goal that we all want to pursue.

25. As I get older, the questions narrow down to two or three. For how long? And what do I do with the time I have left?

As time goes by, we become more aware of our lives.

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

Looking for a way to stand out from everyone.

27. I'm just a person who doesn't feel the need for someone to rate his work in any particular way.

Remember that criticism should be encouraged, but sometimes malicious comments should be ignored.

28. I wish to be a support, in any case, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle of my songs.

It wasn't him who made songs, the songs made him.

29. There is an effort to recover the nameless, the unspeakable, the invisible, the enigmatic... all of those things turn into being a composer and writing music and looking for notes and pieces of musical information that don't exist.

What Bowie means to be a songwriter.

30. For me, the world I actually inhabit is probably a very different world than what people expect me to be in.

Despite the criticism of his way of being and showing himself, he never stopped being who he is.

31. It would not occur to me to work in another musical sphere.

Proud to make the kind of music he did.

32. People of my generation, and I'm not just talking about the Rolling Stones, have settled into a kind of limbo. No one dares to jump without a net.

Talking about how rock stagnated in its day.

33. I would like to color the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

For Bowie, his visual expression was just as important as his songs.

34. I resist as much as possible the tyranny of the mainstream.

Moving away from common and popular things.

35. I hate sleep. I prefer to be awake and working all the time.

Sleep is necessary for our health.

36. I learned a lot from taking drugs, a lot about myself and about life. All this being said, I would not advise anyone to take them.

Even if an experience has been favorable for you, it does not mean that it is also for someone else.

37. I reinvented my image so many times that I think I was originally an overweight Korean woman.

He never had an exact image, he always reinvented himself.

38. I am afraid of the Americans.

He was not comfortable with this audience.

39. I don't like to use the word religion which, for me, is part of a codification of ideas. It is too political a concept.

Bowie leaned towards a personal and more abstract spirituality.

40. I am an instant star. Just add water and stir.

A destiny for which he was made.

41. I am in shock. All the clichés are true. The years fly.

Sometimes things are as they seem in the movies.

42. I feel fear/awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe that there is an intelligence or agent behind it.

About his spiritual beliefs.

43. The real success comes when I reach a certain fullness in the composition and interpretation of a work.

What success meant in the life of David Bowie.

44. I continued designing characters with their personalities and their own world. I use them in interviews! Instead of being me, which would be terribly boring.

Something that was his shield to face the public, became his personal seal.

45. What I do is I write mostly about very personal and very lonely feelings, and I explore it in a different way each time.

His personal way of creating his music.

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

Sharing his religious experiences during his childhood.

47. When a work is, for me, artistically vibrant, I feel that I have achieved that type of success that seems to me the only one worth fighting for.

For those who love what they do, each creation is a success.

48. I have a passion for the visuality of religious rituals, yet despite everything they are completely empty and lacking in substance.

You can be interested in something, even if you don't connect with it.

49. Life is really short as they say. And there really is a God - am I to believe that? If all the other clichés are true, I won't settle for just one.

Although life has a course, you don't necessarily have to stick to the decisions of others.

50. Sometimes it amazes me that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgment after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.

We cannot create a judgment based on a single opinion.

51. I am not comfortable with the idea of ​​containing spiritual life in a body politic, but with man's individual search for his own spirit.

What for Bowie implied spirituality.

52. I like fast drugs, I hate the ones that slow you down, like marijuana.

About his preference for psychotropics.

53. I hate being paternalistic. No matter what he says, young people are going to continue taking drugs because it's a way of experimenting.

You can give advice, but you cannot control or take responsibility for the decisions of others.

54. In most of the arts that interest me, I prefer to look at the periphery: in painting, film, theater, music.

His greatest strength was going outside the rules.

55. Almost everyone is still making the same music as twenty years ago. I would rather retire than fall for it.

Never repeating the same things in the same way.

56. It's the only music I like, the avant-garde. It's been like that since I was a kid...

Having a preference for what was risky.

57. I felt very insignificant. So I thought, 'To hell. I want to be a superhuman.

He took his greatest weakness and turned it into a motivation to thrive.

58. And when the sun is down and the rays are up, I can see it now, I can feel myself dying.

There are times when we feel like we can't go on.

59. Rock is fossilizing; it needs new blood, and the new wave will be born from the fusion of rock and dance music.

Regretting the course that rock took.

60. What I like my music to do to me is wake up the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.

The goal he pursued with his music.

61. I know when to go out and I know when to stay home to do things.

We must not only know how to move forward, but also how to stop.

62. There is nothing to learn from success.

Do you think that success does not leave us valuable lessons?

63. I really didn't have the guts to sing my songs on stage, and no one else was doing it. I decided to do it in costume so I wouldn't have to go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

Speaking of the origin of his extravagant image.

64. It has always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

Even their presentations carried a powerful message.

65. Most of my favorite writers do that: hunt down the same subject, but each time from different directions.

We can see the same thing from different points.

66. I'm not a prophet or a man of stone, I'm just a mortal with Superman potential.

If you have a special talent, take advantage of it.

67. My music explains what I feel for myself.

All his music was a personal diary.

68. You can never win or lose if you don't enter the race.

The only way to know if we can handle something or not is to try.

69. Go crazy on a lunar dream day.

At some point you have to dare to do something different.

70. Do not believe in yourself, do not deceive with belief. Knowledge comes with liberation from death.

A piece of advice on not letting ourselves be blinded by our ego.

71. You wouldn't believe what I've been through anymore.

A life full of ups and downs and a lot of art to get through it all.

72. I think I often bring out the best in someone's talents.

Sometimes we can help someone else grow.

73. We can be heroes just for one day.

Heroes are created when we do something good.

74. I am a born librarian with a sexual desire.

One of the most outrageous things about Bowie was how open he was with his libido.

75. He wanted to demonstrate the sustaining power of music.

Throughout his career he gave us a totally different concept of what music is.

76. A song has to have its personality, its shape, its figure and influence people to such an extent that they can apply it to their own resources.

Each song should have a personal theme.

77. All my big mistakes happen when I'm trying to guess or please an audience.

An example that we should not please anyone other than ourselves.

78. I felt like I wanted to get away from music completely and work in the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

Talking about his passion for acting.

79. My work is always stronger when I become very selfish.

If it's to please you, be selfish.

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

If there's one thing Bowie offered us, it was entertainment.

81. Apart from music, there are things that are very important to me, like theater or mime.

A clear example of how he saw art as a set of many specialties.

82. I keep a recorder next to the bed... if inspiration strikes me, I have it at hand.

A very good tip for all artists.

83. It always amazes me that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take who I am seriously.

We can't take life so seriously.

84. We live closer to the Earth, never to the heavens. The stars are never far away, tonight the stars have come out.

Even in the dark we can shine.

85. I've never had any interest in mainstream music.

The style of music I couldn't stand.

86. It's much more fun to progress than to look back.

The future fills us with excitement, while the past only brings anxiety.

87. It all depends on how adventurous one is. I have been in the hole and I know that it is very difficult to get out of it.

Ultimately, motivation has to come from within.

88. Any material success is secondary or, I suppose, some kind of recognition bonus. The real success is artistic and spiritual.

It's always comforting to have some kind of reward, but in the end, it's the inner satisfaction that counts.

89. I really had a hunger to experience everything life had to offer, from opium to anything else.

Never hold back from the experiences you can have.

90. I've realized that I have no idea what I'm doing half the time.

Having that feeling of not knowing what to do with our lives is more common than it seems.