David Bowie

All Montreal bands have around nine members, I believe.

I knew that I was 'interesting' at 18 because I was aware that I could get away with doing things on stage.

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn't live past 30.

I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.

I guess it's flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.

I think Mustique is Duchampian - it will always provide an endless source of delight.

It's amazing: I am a New Yorker. It's strange; I never thought I would be.

I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs - that's where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that's very cool.

Being shoved into the top-40 scene was an unusual experience. It was great I'd become accessible to a huge audience but not terribly fulfilling.

I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement - it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original.

The truest form of any form of revolutionary Left, whatever you want to call it, was Jack Kerouac, E.E. Cummings, & Ginsberg's period. Excuse me, but that's where it was at.

I was born in London 1947, after the war. A real wartime baby. I went to school in Brixton, and then I moved up to Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. I lived on the farms up there.

The skin of my character in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' was some concoction, a spermatozoon of an alien nature that was obscene and weird-looking.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I've done for 25 years. I don't need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer... I write.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

I've always tended to write songs prolifically.

There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn't bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.