- Dana Gillespie: Love never came into it, which, thank God, you know, if you're going to fall in love with Bowie, you might as well kiss your sanity goodbye. Because, he loved himself, extremely. Always did.
- Tony Hatch: There are some songwriters that are just commentators. But, Bowie was a storyteller. And, so, he was going to rummage into all his experiences to find things that he could write about. It was something - new.
- David Bowie: I think there's a passion for most people who have an iota of, sort of, curiosity about escape and get out and try and find who one is.
- [first lines]
- David Bowie: Once upon a time, your father, my father, everybody's father, I presume, wanted a good job, with a good income, to secure their family life. A role in society. And that's where it ended, but, now people want to be an individual and I think there's a lot of searching to find the individual within oneself.
- Dana Gillespie: Everything he did, kind of, failed. "The Laughing Gnome," that single that he loathed, didn't give him satisfaction. I don't know how he coped with this, except that I do know that if you want something hard enough and its not happened, it only makes you want to go on and want it even more.
- David Bowie: You find yourself in the middle of two worlds. There's the extreme values of people who grow up in the countryside and the very *urban* feel of the city. In suburbia, you're given the impression that nothing culturally belongs to you. That you are sort of in this wasteland.
- Carlos Alomar: In a way, David was also very clever. That simplicity aspect, I think, is very, very important. I mean, his love for the Velvet Underground and the whole Lou Reed thing, and the simplicity of "Waiting for the Man". 'Waiting for the man.' That same pulsation, 'I was walking... ' is exactly the same. 'Waiting for the man'. Two chords. I mean, "Fame" - is three chords. And so this simplicity is amazing. And its totally relevant. *But*, the Velvet Underground was cool. There's nothing cool about "The Laughing Gnome."
- David Bowie: Other than just rock music, there's always been a history of the rebel, of not being drawn to the tyranny of the mainstream.
- David Bowie: I really am open to influence and new ideas and old ideas, as well. I don't put a block on things.
- David Bowie: I was one of the first kids in Britain to have a Velvet Underground album. I know that for a fact; because, somebody had brought me back a demo copy of it before it was even released in America. The Underground were, I thought, a most incredible sound that was this sort of mixture of rock and avant-garde. And the combination was so brutal.
- John Hutchinson: When I was in his parents house, they're facing a television and the parents were sitting there, quite quiet. They offered me some tuna fish sandwiches. But, then there was silence. And I'm somebody that, I mean, I can talk to *anybody* and it was hard going. It was soulless. Once they'd gone out, he said, "Whatever it takes, I want to get *out* of here. I do not want to live like this."
- David Bowie: The idea of writing some short stories, I think that was quite novel at the time. Excuse the pun. I was quite satisfied with the way things were going.
- David Bowie: To me, the Velvet Underground represented the wild side of existentialist America, the underbelly of American culture. That was everything that I thought we should have in England. But, of course, being filtered through this British system, it came out more vaudeville.
- David Bowie: I think the isolation of the film "2001" made it so very obvious when I wrote the song "Space Oddity." Because, for the first time, I really felt a sense of how you could write as an isolationist.
- Hermione Farthingale: He'd try one thing. Try another. If things, if they didn't work out, that was absolutely fine. Then, just move on to the next. But, he wasn't lost. The just wasn't - found, either.
- David Bowie: Somehow, I knew that what I was doing was important. Taking elements from areas that really shouldn't sit comfortably with each other.
- David Bowie: Everything hurts me, very much. I'm very sensitive. But, I put myself in that position, so, that's - what I'm in for, isn't it?
- Tony Visconti: [referring to "Space Oddity"] Another new thing it had on it, which the Beatles kind of debuted, was the mellotron.
- Rick Wakeman: David wanted it because he wanted it to sound not like strings, but like stings. And I knew exactly what he meant. It's recorded strings. It's a taped sound. But, one of the problems you have with this instrument is that it only last eight seconds and it cuts out. So, if you hold a chord long enough, and sometimes you need to hold it for a lot longer than eight seconds, after you get to the eight second line, it starts to
- [sound gets wobbly and abruptly stop]
- Rick Wakeman: - to do that - which is why I hated the bloody thing. I have to be brutally honest with you.
- David Bowie: I thought, "Well, gee, I am Major Tom. Here I am in my own cosmic space and nobody can possibly understand what its like to be out here on this umbilical cord attached to my craft.
- David Bowie: I have always been a very curious and enthusiastic person. I just had to accept that I was a person with a very short attention span who moved from one thing to another quite rapidly. Then I got bored with the other.
- David Bowie: [referring to "Space Oddity"] I related it to myself a lot more than anything I'd ever written up till then. There was something about it that touched areas of my fears about my own insecurities socially and maybe emotionally. This feeling of isolation I had ever since I was a kid was really starting to manifest itself.
- David Bowie: I think I'd realized that the transitory nature of life was something that we all had to deal with.
- David Bowie: Insanity was something that I was terribly fearful of. But, I felt that I was the lucky one; because, as long as I could put those psychological excesses into my music, then I could always be throwing it off.
- David Bowie: I think I was getting nearer to what I wanted to do, which is to create this alternative world. Which is what I ultimately ended up doing with the Ziggy thing.
- Tony Visconti: [referring to "Space Oddity"] I said you'll never write another song like this again and he didn't. What he did come up with was something no one dreamt about at the time. He was the first rock star to take on a different identity. In other words, it was Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie. That was his *stroke* of genius.
- Rick Wakeman: [referring to playing the mellotron on "Space Oddity"] Covered it in echo to get the actual sound that David wanted - which I have nicked ever since to use on Yes records.
- David Bowie: [referring to his half-brother] Terry probably gave me the greatest education I could have ever had. I mean he just introduced me to the outside things. And I guess Terry had shown me that there's always been a history of the outside, of the rebel, of not being in the center, not being drawn to the tyranny of the mainstream.
- David Bowie: God came to me and he said "Let there be Ziggy." And I just saw the world in another kind of fashion. And it was about pushing together all the pieces and all the things that fascinated me, culturally. A hybrid of everything I liked - just playing around with the idea of rock-n-roll.
- [last lines]
- David Bowie: To make the kind of breakthrough I needed, I had to put on a few trappings, in the beginning. And I think now, I will just be David Bowie - period. I've got massive plans for the future.
- David Bowie: The artist is strictly a figment of people's imagination. I really believe that. We are the original false prophets. We are the gods. We want it all. You know, we want all the adulation and the people to read the lyrics and everything - just to play the game. We don't exist.
- Mick Woodmansey: [referring to the weak sales of the "The man who sold the world" LP] I thought at the time, okay, it's pretty hard rock and progressive, a lot of it. So, imagine you've got a Zeppelin album, a Sabbath album, and this guy in a dress. It's not gonna happen - just for the cover alone.
- Tony Visconti: Every arrangement we did on "The man who sold the world" album, we started them at Haddon Hall; but, we finished most of the album in the studio and made up our own parts on the spot. And David would go off in the hallway and write the lyrics. I'd go out a half an hour later and he'd just be holding hands with Angie. And I go, "Come on, write the damn lyrics, for God's sake." "The man who sold the world" was written - the lyrics were written on the same day we recorded it - which was the last day of the album.