The Good Quote
Open menu
Quotes
Authors
Topics
More
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
Home
Authors
Brian Eno
British
Musician
About the author
For me it's always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it's always sound first and then the line afterwards.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#First
#Sound
The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#World
#Idea
#Brothers
Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Want
#Research
#Music
I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It's still got the same strings on it.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Years
#Guitar
Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It's inevitable.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Music
At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Art
#Music
#Beginning
#Ambition
Every collaboration helps you grow. With Bowie, it's different every time. I know how to create settings, unusual aural environments. That inspires him. He's very quick.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Time
#Quick
#Collaboration
I'm very good with technology, I always have been, and with machines in general. They seem not threatening like other people find them, but a source of fun and amusement.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#People
#Fun
#Technology
#Amusement
#Machines
For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Time
#World
A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Control
I don't live in the past at all; I'm always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Forget
#Past
#Trying
#Mind
I enjoy working with complicated equipment. A lot of my things started just with a rhythm box, but I feed it through so many things that what comes out sounds very complex and rich.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Freedom
I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Trouble
#Learning
I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I've never been interested in that.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Work
#Idea
#Personality
I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Art
#Thought
#Magic
#School
I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Voice
As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Sound
I'm not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Song
I take sounds and change them into words.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Words
#Change
I see TV as a picture medium rather than a narrative medium.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
I often work by avoidance.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Work
I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#People
#Energy
#Ireland
#Countries
I have a definite talent for convincing people to try something new. I am a good salesman. When I'm on form, I can sell anything.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#People
#Talent
I hate the rock music tradition. I can't bear it!
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Music
#Tradition
#Hate
I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Years
#Play
#Thought
#Magic
My guitar only has five strings 'cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Play
#Guitar
Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Sense
#Attention
#Music
#Musicians
#Listening
#Tension
Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Words
#Music
Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don't fit in a very interesting way.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Trying
It's not the destination that matters. It's the change of scene.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Change
If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn't bother to find new ones.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
If you're in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Effect
#Quality
#Trees
#Echo
If you watch any good player, they're using different parts of their body and working with instruments that respond to those movements. They're moving in many dimensions at once.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Body
If you want to make someone feel emotion, you have to make them let go. Listening to something is an act of surrender.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Want
#Act
#Listening
#Emotion
#Surrender
My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Writing
We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Thought
#Experience
#Music
#Composers
In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#People
#Trying
#Song
Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I'm sort of building up to doing something else quite soon.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Fun
#Building
#Being
#Merit
One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn't if you knew better.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Knowledge
#Results
People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Songs
#Words
#People
#Song
#Meaning
Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Will
#First
Set up a situation that presents you with something slightly beyond your reach.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Work
#Idea
#Computer
#Decisions
The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Music
The reason I don't tour is that I don't know how to front a band. What would I do? I can't really play anything well enough to deal with that situation.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Play
#Reason
When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Idea
#Rest
When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Country
#England
#Tradition
#Weight
I've discovered this new electronic technique that creates new speech out of stuff that's already there.
Brian Eno,
British
Musician
#Speech