black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Some people are very good at being ‘stars’ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.

Brian Eno

All cultures have these feelings about non-functional areas of activity. And the more time people have on their hands, the more they commit it to those areas.
BRIAN ENO

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

Act Doing Knows
I believe in singing.
BRIAN ENO

Believe Happen Life Magic Singing
The handbook always tells you what it does, and you can be quite sure that if it’s a complex device it can do at least fifteen other things that weren’t predicted in the handbook, or that they didn’t consider desirable. It’s normally those other things that interest me.
BRIAN ENO

Device Easiest Handbook Predicted Things
Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.
BRIAN ENO

Action Demand Reality
I see TV as a picture medium rather than a narrative medium.
BRIAN ENO

Mediums Narrative Television
One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.
BRIAN ENO

Art Feel Good People
When I was working with Talking Heads what would happen typically is that they would go out and start playing a track, and I would always run the tape.
BRIAN ENO

Interesting Running Track
Anything popular is populist, and populist is rarely a good adjective.
BRIAN ENO

Adjectives Populism Populist
In terms of what has been happening recently, there have been, I think, some really interesting new instruments that have come out that sort of show me the direction of the future. Korg has introduced the – they’ve had a whole series now of these things called Kaoss Pads.
BRIAN ENO

Come Future Interesting Out Thinking
When I work there are two distinct phases: the phase of pushing the work along, getting something to happen, where all the input comes from me, and phase two, where things start to combine in a way that wasn’t expected or predicted by what I supplied.
BRIAN ENO

Come Happen Identity Moving Something Term
I hate the thought that someone had picked up one of my song records and was really excited about it, and walks [out of] a record shop with On Land and is disappointed because it isn’t what they wanted.
BRIAN ENO

Hate Land Song
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
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 got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders.
BRIAN ENO

Compose Firsts Heard Ideas Tape
People do dismiss ambient music, don’t they? They call it ‘easy listening,’ as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.
BRIAN ENO

Easy Listening People
I hate the way CDs just drone on for bloody hours and you stop caring.
BRIAN ENO

Bloddy Caring Hate
Not many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band.
BRIAN ENO

People Underground Velvet
I don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.
BRIAN ENO

Evolve Ideas Programme
I want to rethink surrender as an active verb.
BRIAN ENO

Surrender Verbs Want
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

Certain Messages Rich
Cultural objects have no notable identity outside of that which we confer upon them. Their value is entirely a product of the interaction that we have with them.
BRIAN ENO

Identity InterAction Notable
I despise computers in many ways. I think they’re hopelessly underevolved and overrated.
BRIAN ENO

Computer Thinking Way
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

Behind Roles Scenes Spotlight
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

Anything End never Outsider Something Think
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

Chord Cutting Guitar Play
Quite often, and in fact more often, I would say, I’m struggling all the way through to think, “What is it I like about this? What is the personality of this thing I’m hearing that I like so much?”
BRIAN ENO

Dark Personality Struggle Sweet

Some people are very good at being ‘stars’ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Some people are very good at being ‘stars’ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Brian Eno Quotes