Top 52 Quotes & Sayings by Dave Gahan

'Presence of God' is really that understanding that sometimes when you step out of your own shoes and just open your ears and listen to what's going on around you, you get answers to the questions you were asking.

You're only going to get surface with me. It takes me ages to warm up to people.

Joy comes from places you least expect it. It's usually the simple things, like watching my son play basketball or going through Central Park when the blossoms are blooming.

It takes a long time to find your own voice. Along the way, you imitate all the things that influence you - in my case Johnny Cash, Bowie, John Lydon.

I have a very addictive personality, so I'm even careful about wanting more of anything than I need - even chocolate.

The possibilities are endless now, with performing, getting your music online, getting your own website and getting your music out there. I think that's very cool and amazing.

If you ask me who the members of the Rolling Stones or Led Zep or the Clash were, I'd be able to tell you every member. But I couldn't name a single member of Arctic Monkeys.

If you stick around long enough, you're going to become fashionable eventually.

I still hold on to the idea that a record can really change the way I feel.

Certain songs like 'Enjoy the Silence' - to me, it always fits anywhere. There's something about that song that's really timeless, and I never get bored or feel like I have to muster something up.

The whole 'serious artist' thing is very damaging. The powers that be will steer you towards your own demise. One thing I've learned is that it's not very glamourous, and my problems are no different from anybody else's.

To me, it's always been a challenge to look for the light: to look for those spaces in your heart where there is hope and faith and try to embrace that rather than crush it. I've spent so many years trying to crush those feelings of hope, and I certainly succeeded for quite a while.

There's that side of me that wants to be the loving, caring father, and there's the other side of me that's just a dirty animal. If I don't let that out, I go nuts.

I go to a very visual place when I'm singing. It's very cinematic and I get this feeling of space. I love when music does that.

When I was growing up in the early '70s and really getting into music, waiting outside the record store for that 45, waiting for a single from The Dead, The Clash, David Bowie, or T-Rex or something to be there. There was something about that that was so special.

I think there's a great strength in having the courage and also having the support to do what you want to do when you're an artist in any way, shape or form.

You've got to put interesting people around you; you've got to work with people who are gonna inspire you to take the songs you've written into a completely different direction, because there's nothing more boring than going to the studio and predictably knowing what is going to happen.

In the early to mid-'90s, everywhere I turned, someone had died. It wasn't just people in bands. It was the people I was hanging out with. At some point, I thought, 'I may be heading down that road.'

To go on the road and see people sing my own lyrics back to me is just fantastic.

I have to feel the audience. I enjoy that feeling of community. There's something sort of spiritual about it in a lot of ways. It's like we're all doing this together.

I do use texting as a great way to communicate quickly, but I don't Twitter or anything.

I go to see some big shows of other bands, and I feel like I'm so bombarded and over-stimulated that I lose interest in the music. There has to be light and shade, and less stimulating moments. There has to be an arc to the show.

Depeche Mode have never got over their teenage awkwardness with each other. We're still like that. Mates but not mates. That awkwardness is there, only now we have families and kids.

When I'm with the wife, and we're having a romantic night, I occasionally think about a glass of red wine, but I'll order a sparkling water. I'd like the wine, but it wouldn't end with one glass, so I don't even go there.

L.A. is always great. There's something special about L.A. And New York, for me, because it's home. There's nothing quite like walking onstage at Madison Square Garden.

Growing up in a band is weird - you get stuck hanging on to what it is you think you are. But what I took into Depeche was that punk ethic, that you don't have to be accomplished to be a musician. If you've got ideas, you can do this.

Like every New Yorker, I have a love/hate relationship with the city. There are times it's overbearing, but when I'm away even for a little while, I can't wait to get home. I am a New Yorker.

There isn't an amount of money you could offer me to do reality TV. I would rather get my job back on the building site. Or I could own a construction business. Maybe I could retire to my house in Long Island and take up painting, like Captain Beefheart. A crazy recluse: I like that idea.

I really believe that the more distractions and fixes I remove from my life, the better I'll feel about myself. The biggest of those is Depeche Mode. It's the one marriage that survived, but I'm not sure it works - for me, anyway. Jumping on a plane to go somewhere else and be told how wonderful I am doesn't feel good any more.

I definitely have a dark side of me that can be pretty vicious... as we all do.

I had a few brushes with death, where I nearly chose to go. The final one in 1996 did it for me. I suddenly had that feeling that I wasn't indestructible. There was no big white light experience, I just felt this complete blackness and a huge voice inside me saying, 'This is not right.'

Making a record with 'Depeche Mode' is not a simple process. It's quite complicated and long. We have the luxury of time. I'm not sure that's such a good thing when you're being creative.

I always played around with writing songs, but when you're spending a lot of time in bars, you have a lot of big ideas, but you don't do much with them.

There has to be an interaction of musicians on stage. Otherwise I feel too alone up there. When performing is really good, when it really works, maybe once every 15 shows, it's very special, and you realize that's why you do it.

I often find myself on my knees praying to something or someone to not be in control.

The thing about Depeche songs is that they’re so descriptive. For me, they tell some kind of story about a character who’s trying to redeem himself or to find something to believe in-some kind of faith or hope.

I'm not that type of musician where I can sit down at the piano and work out a song; I actually really enjoy that process of sitting with somebody and having nothing and then suddenly something starts appearing. You struggle with it, and then suddenly a song starts to appear. Then, you've got to try and muscle it - there's that word again - into something and you do. You tussle with it and play with it and roll around with it and suddenly, magically, something appears.

"I dissolve in trust, I will sing with joy, I will end up dust". The line really spoke to me. That's what it is: Enjoy what you have here. You're not going to be here forever, but the songs stay forever. For me, it's like Bowie songs - they carry me, and they continue to, even though he's gone.

I think Depeche Mode music somehow appeals to the oddball, to the person who is looking for something a little bit different.

You have a tendency to just remember the bad times and bad moments. I think that often it's the way of life. Yet the rewards we got from it were fantastic and we played a lot of shows to sellout audiences in I don't know how many cities. I just think we didn't realise how insane it was until we were actually right in the middle of it and couldn't stop. We just couldn't stop.

We live very wonderful, privileged lives, and we're very lucky and fortunate, but it doesn't mean we stop caring. With Brexit and everything, and then Donald Trump running for president, of course, we were like, "Is this really happening? No, of course not, it's never gonna happen." It's impossible to not affected by the craziness of the world.

New York is a great place to feel inspired all the time.

I have the urge to still be part of the world, the universe, of life. Through music I have the feeling that I come a little closer to that.

We seem to be in a really interesting time, a time of weird change and values and choices, and "Who are you really? Where's the revolution, and what does it mean to you? What are your choices?" To me, America is built on immigrants - everybody coming here and making America "Great," as Donald Trump would say. And that's what New York is, a melting pot for all these different races and religions. We all live on this little island together and somehow get on, some days. But most of the time it's proven to have worked, right? So I don't know what the f - k he's talking about.

Vocally, I really like going into the darker side of myself.

There's always this weird dark humor within a lot of Depeche Mode songs that people miss, tongue-in-cheek and also very British.

Really, what I'm always drawn to is the voice - PJ Harvey , Björk . If the voice interests me, then I'm interested to listen to what's happening.

Music is still the one thing that ties people together. People can come together from all different religions, walks of life, colours, creeds and enjoy the same song. That's still the most incredible thing to me about performing live.

I was actually grateful for being arrested, for the judge that promised me that I would go to prison if I didn't stay clean, because I listened to him and something clicked. Those two years when we were making album "Ultra" and I had to go back and forth to court to prove to the judge that I'd stayed clean, it gave me this time to suddenly realize, "Oh, I can do this, I can crawl my way back, I can get better. And I do want to be here."

I have to feel the audience. I enjoy that feeling of community.

Joy comes from places you least expect it. Its usually the simple things, like watching my son play basketball or going through Central Park when the blossoms are blooming.

I do use texting as a great way to communicate quickly, but I dont Twitter or anything.