"Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they're intended to be used for."

"With music, you often don't have to translate it. It just affects you, and you don't know why."

"I'm proud of 'Stop Making Sense,' but it's a little bit of an albatross; I can't compete with it, but I can't ignore it either."

"I've made money, and I've been ripped off. I've had creative freedom, and I've been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will."

"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'm very much into making lists and breaking things apart into categories."

"I've noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it's various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing."

"Most of our lives aren't that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details."

"Performing is a thing in itself, a distinct skill, different from making recordings. And for those who can do it, it's a way to make a living."

"That's the one for my tombstone... Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?"

"I love getting out of my comfort zone."

"The physical sensation of gliding with the wind in your face is exhilarating. That automatic activity of pedalling, when you have to be awake but not think too much, allows you to let subconscious thoughts bubble up, and things seem to just sort themselves out. And the adrenaline wakes you up if you weren't properly alert."

"All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label."

"The arts don't exist in isolation."

"Some artists and indie musicians see Spotify fairly positively - as a way of getting noticed, of getting your music out there where folks can hear it risk-free."

"Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols."

"Yeah, it's pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days."

"I have trouble imagining what I could do that's beyond the practicality of what I can do."

"We don't make music - it makes us."

"The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?"

"With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters."

"I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously."

"I subscribe to the myth that an artist's creativity comes from torment. Once that's fixed, what do you draw on?"

"One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you're allowed to fail."

"From what I've heard, Paris did a little bit more prep work as far as making bike lanes and all of that stuff. They really did it properly, which New York is getting to little by little."

"I always think the everyday is more relevant than anything too grand because we all have to deal with it."

"In retrospect, I can see I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!"

"I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don't censor yourself, you end up with what you're most concerned about, but you haven't filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it."

"I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching."

"I'm not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down."

"Physical contact is a human necessity."

"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."

"Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what's going to happen in my life."

"You go to a festival, you know you're not going to play all new material at a festival. The audience is not there for that. I've made that mistake, but you find out pretty quickly."

"One knew in advance that life in New York would not be easy, but there were cheap rents in cold-water lofts without heat, and the excitement of being here made up for those hardships. I didn't move to New York to make a fortune."

"I cycled when I was at high school, then reconnected with bikes in New York in the late '70s. It was a good way of getting around the clubs and galleries of the Lower East Side and Soho."

"Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone - a memory."

"Frank Lloyd Wright... his things were beautiful but not very functional."

"I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass."

"The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world's popular music is a good thing, for the most part."

"People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that's pretty much all you can ask."

"I don't think people are going to switch over to bikes because it's good for them or because it's politically correct. They're going to do it because it gets them from A to B faster."

"I don't think people are going to switch over to bikes because it's good for them or because it's politically correct. They're going to do it because it gets them from A to B faster."

"Yeah, anybody can go in with two turntables and a microphone or a home studio sampler and a little cassette deck or whatever and make records in their bedrooms."

"Well, Marx is having a comeback. I hear him mentioned a lot in terms of the global financial situation and the general sense of injustice out there. A lot of economic experts in America refer to him without actually using the M word, but he's around."

"As everything becomes digitized, there's the idea that things that can't be digitized become more valuable."

"I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don't think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me."

"In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words."

"Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so."

"Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don't buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down."