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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

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

Guitar Pounds Years
It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.
BRIAN ENO

Democracy Disappear Easy
What matters in modern music is not the part you can write down, the words and the tune, but the rest – the texture, the atmosphere, the references and associations.
BRIAN ENO

Atmosphere Matters References What Writing
I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.
BRIAN ENO

Paper Song Structure
I believe in singing.
BRIAN ENO

Believe Happen Life Magic Singing
I love San Francisco and Brighton has something of San Francisco about it. It’s by the sea, there’s a big gay community, a feeling of people being there because they enjoy their life there.
BRIAN ENO

Country Gay People Sea Something
In my normal life I’m a very unadventurous person.
BRIAN ENO

Life Normal Persons
Being completely free to choose what to do is actually quite difficult
BRIAN ENO

Being Choose Completely Difficult
Composition is a way of living out your philosophy and calling it art.
BRIAN ENO

Art Calling Philosophy
It’s easy to forget that your best work is done when your attention is fully engaged.
BRIAN ENO

Attention Done Forget
If I tried to make a commercial album, it would be a complete flop. I have no idea what the world at large likes.
BRIAN ENO

Albums Commercial Ideas
I wanted quite the opposite of that. I wanted them to accent their styles, so that they pulled away.
BRIAN ENO

Away Pulled Quite Wanted
I hate the way CDs just drone on for bloody hours and you stop caring.
BRIAN ENO

Bloddy Caring Hate
I’ve noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it’s far enough in the future.
BRIAN ENO

Agree Enough Terrible
Feelings are more dangerous than ideas, because they aren’t susceptible to rational evaluation. They grow quietly, spreading underground, and erupt suddenly, all over the place.
BRIAN ENO

Evaluation Feelings Ideas
You don’t have to act as if you know what you’re doing
BRIAN ENO

Act Doing Knows
I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.
BRIAN ENO

Hate Talking
With all fashion, what we do is play at being somebody else. We play at inhabiting another kind of world.
BRIAN ENO

Fashion Play World
I don’t like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.
BRIAN ENO

Headphones Listening To Music
A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.
BRIAN ENO

Become Control Immortal Part
I see TV as a picture medium rather than a narrative medium.
BRIAN ENO

Mediums Narrative Television
There are hundreds of manufacturers always producing dvices that in general do the same things. Since they have slight structural differences if you take one and fool around with it and give it a good kick it will actually do something that it wasn’t designed to do.
BRIAN ENO

Giving Long Mean
The muscles are there simply to serve the head. But that isn’t how traditional players work at all; musicians know that their muscles have a lot of stuff going on as well. They’re using their whole body to make music, in fact.
BRIAN ENO

Body Muscles Players Traditional Use Whole
I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.
BRIAN ENO

Aquariums Essentials Voice
Rationality is what we do to organize the world, to make it possible to predict. Art is the rehearsal for the inapplicability and failure of that process.
BRIAN ENO

Art Rehearsal World
We have two different ways of working. One is completely unstructured where somebody just starts playing and somebody joins in and then the other person joins in, and something starts to happen. That’s occasionally what happens.
BRIAN ENO

Mean Moving Play Playing Somebody
I had an interesting day. I was in the studio with a group of musicians, who shall remain nameless, and I said to them “Our exercise today is not to use ‘undo’ at all. So, there’s no second takes. Or, if you do a second take, you have to do the whole take.
BRIAN ENO

Exercise Interesting People

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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