Top 140 Quotes & Sayings by Devendra Banhart - Page 2

Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, the ubiquitous music is salsa, cumbia, merengue, a little bit of samba.

John Cage is someone I got into as a visual artist, before I even knew his music. I don't think a lot of people even know that he does visual art.

Well, love is a difficult thing to hold on to. It's a slippery little beast. It will hold you and then it will elude you at any moment.

People love to take sides, but it's not effective. It's not really an effective way of communicating something, because you're either already part of the side or you're going to feel attacked and get defensive.

A soul singer is always singing to their crowd. They're always singing about their woes to you. And I really appreciate that when a singer is making you feel... when they're directing it at me. When they're including me.

I've always lived in small places.

I was born in Texas, you know. I was born in Houston.

I like clothes. I really do. I like going through colors, in a way. I go, 'Greens, man. Greens. Oh, yellow. This yellow feels good.' So it shapes your psyche in a way. But I don't think about it too much, even though I'm interested in it.

Well I am a Gemini.

Canada has really grown and grown as this unexplored and very mysterious and exotic place to me.

I want to say that Beck is incredible. He is an art machine.

Caracas was a crazy place in the early Nineties. For instance, when I was 11 years old, I pierced my ear. No big deal, right? But everyone was so scandalised that they shut down the school.

I look at making records like you make a dish. A culinary experience. The way you throw in a tambourine, it's like spices or herbs. The main part of the song is the stock.

I believe we are all dual beings. Some cultures actually believe we have two souls.

In the next life what would my career be? Oh, easy. Dried persimmon dealer.

When I came home my parents were listening to Pakistani Qawwali music, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, they're listening to music from Mali, like Ali Farka Toure, they're listening to Brazilian songwriters, like Gilberto Gil, to opera, to Neil Young even, things you don't hear as a kid in Caracas. I love all the music they turned me onto.

Something I practice everyday is Tonglin. It's Tibetan for taking and receiving.

I don't ever think of myself as a dark person or a ruined person in any way. I just feel happy to be alive, and to be able to love.

At some point in your life, if you live in Venezuela, you come across or own a cuatro. Either at school, either at camp, either at a friend's house, at a birthday or Christmas or bar mitzvah, you end up with a cuatro. It's like a must.

I guess I don't want everyone to know what I'm doing every second.

Leigh Bowery is a legend. Everybody loves Leigh Bowery. Everybody should love Leigh Bowery.

Let's take fashion seriously, but not ourselves so seriously. Or reverse that, maybe don't take fashion so seriously, but take yourself seriously. Actually, don't take yourself seriously, that's for sure. So, yeah, take fashion seriously, just not yourself.

I can't imagine anyone approaching art without the joy of experimentation. The joy of it is inherent... and that is how you flow with the reality of change.

Coming to Canada, I'd really like to see Sasquatch.

The first paid show was in Los Angeles at an art opening and I was paid maybe, I don't know, twenty five bucks?

I've always said that musicians are the comics of my generations and comedians are the politicians of my generation.

I sometimes feel like I should be in the hotel business.

I love 'Star Wars.'

I've been doing visual stuff for as long as I've been making records; in fact, for longer.

I remember when I was a kid I thought I could either be an athletic water drinker, like an Olympic-level water drinker, or I could invent Windex. Which I thought was really smart, because it already existed.

I'm very lucky my parents were into different kinds of music.

One not-to-be-mentioned major said they would sign me if I worked with a team of songwriters to help me finish songs, ha! Of course, in hindsight, I should've done it just to see what that would have been like.

Personally speaking, Canada is becoming more and more beguiling and mysterious and I feel as though I really need to explore it.

If you're ever wondering what to wear, just dress like a pumpkin, you're good to go.

I was born with a beard. We're quite hairy down in Latin America. We don't have to use sponges when we wash dishes. We just use our baby beards.

I come from a school of artists, the Mission School in San Francisco, and there are a lot of artists I look up to.

My interested in Brazilian music stemmed from wanting to find a musical identity other than the salsa and meringue that I was inundated with in Venezuela as a child.

The real hippie is trying to create something inclusive, something holistic, something loving and healthy which isn't in perpetual conflict with authority and actually knows that the only way to disarm the entire game is to step aside and not take any sides.

Green is one of my favorite colors.

With music there's so many limbs and facets. Video and touring and merchandise and all those little things require attention. They're artist things but I tend to joke around too much with those things.

I'm one of those people that if you're told that if you put your hand in the fire, you'll burn your hand, I won't listen.

I think five percent of all songs can be love songs, and another five percent can be miscellaneous or political, but the rest should just be about medieval feminists.

There are so many bad songs that have incredible videos. It's pretty amazing, actually. The power of putting images to music is hypnotizing. It's a real power. That's a realm that I've failed at completely.

If you have sensitivity then mysticism will be part of your life. It's a very beautiful thing and a very real thing but it's not something to not take seriously and it's not something to take seriously.

I've always noticed talking about lyrics is like talking about a duality. It's like a Gemini time every time I talk about one line. Because each line, of course, means different things to different people, millions of interpretations. With me, I always see two sides. I just see things split into two.

I've always wanted to write a song that goes, "I love you" and a book that goes, "Something happened." Something very direct.

I cannot wait for all the mistakes we have yet to make

And because my teeth don't bite, I can take them out dancing I can take my little teeth out and show them a real good time

Trying to find comfort in perpetual discomfort has been my life's work.

Good art doesn't really have an expiration date on it. That's something to be happy about, if you're making art.

People want to be successful, and they want to be acknowledged for what they do. Sometimes they make really great art and aren't. Historically, the best artists weren't. But their work survived.

There is something to mystery. You make up this entire world that you fit into because of what the actual music does to you.

Cripple crow say something for our grieving, where do we go once we start leaving. Well close that wound or else keep on bleeding and change your tune, it's got no meaning.

We live in an age where many things are working hard to conk us out and anesthetize us. Anything we can do to shake us out of that- with no other purpose than to wake us- is valuable.

It only takes one profound experience to change somebody's life.

I get to swim in the ocean every single day, which is a very, very important thing to do to stay connected.

In my little world, I'm very protected 'cause I'm treated like the idiot I am by my buddies. But, a little bit outside that world, people sometimes expect heavy things from me. For a little time, I tried to appease and not disappoint people but in the end you're just going to kill yourself and fail if you're trying to give more than you are.

I heard somebody say that the war ended today, but everybody knows it's going still.

Some people like to say serendipitous. I like to say magical.

Having friends who are records nerds - that's the best thing you can do, have a record-geek friend to take you far.