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 ENOPainting, I think it’s like jazz.
More Brian Eno Quotes
-
-
I do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‘I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.’
BRIAN ENO -
When people censor themselves they’re just as likely to get rid of the good bits as the bad bits.
BRIAN ENO -
So, that means you can only play either very high or very low or both. And we’re going to stay there until I take my finger down.
BRIAN ENO -
Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‘Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this’ – have become commonplace in films and music too.
BRIAN ENO -
Let’s do something else.”And you always think “Oh my God I’ve never done anything at all like that before.” But, of course, in retrospect, and to an outsider, they’ll say, “Oh, yeah that’s typical Eno.
BRIAN ENO -
The tools are evolving, and people’s interests are evolving as well. So, suddenly people like to hear bands, people like Devendra Banhart or the xx, bands that make a kind of virtue of sloppiness.
BRIAN ENO -
I prefer to shoot the arrow, then paint the target around it. You make the niches in which you finally reside.
BRIAN ENO -
The most important thing in a piece of music is to seduce people to the point where they start searching.
BRIAN ENO -
Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.
BRIAN ENO -
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 -
A big ego isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A big ego means that you have some confidence in your abilities, really, and that you’re prepared to take the risk of trying them out.
BRIAN ENO -
It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.
BRIAN ENO -
Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.
BRIAN ENO -
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 -
Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
BRIAN ENO