David Bowie: If I wasn't going through a thing where I was also being...

I don't profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.

David Bowie

theatre important numbers

A mutual friend knew that we were both [with Iman Abdulmajid] on our own, with broken marriages and with children. We were brought to dinner one night. . . . It was absolutely instantaneous. I couldn't get her out of my mind . . . sleepless nights - real 18-year-old stuff.

David Bowie

real night children

We see each other [ with Iman Abdulmajid] a lot. I couldn't stand to be separated for months. It became quickly apparent to me that I needed to find a balance between my absolute work obsession and a private life that we could share without my disappearing all the time.

David Bowie

balance obsession months

I didn't say that wearing a glamorization of the rock artist was any truer from the other thing.

David Bowie

rocks artist

My father worked for a children's home called Dr. Barnardo's Homes. They're a charity.

David Bowie

home father children

My mother was a housewife. Both from - well, my father was from a farming family, agricultural family in the north of England. And my mother came from a very working class.

David Bowie

mother class father

I realized the other day that I've lived in New York longer than I've lived anywhere else. It's amazing: I am a New Yorker. It's strange; I never thought I would be.

David Bowie

strange new-york would-be

I don't live for the stage. I don't live for an audience.

David Bowie

audience stage

There's a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I'm affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn't want to leave. He likes it very much.

David Bowie

majority brother people

In fact, in Europe, I'm more kind of this bloke what writes lots of stuff.

David Bowie

stuff writing europe

Mine is really - Ziggy Stardust, characters, "Let's Dance." That's me in the American.

David Bowie

stardust mines character

I think everything that I learned about stagecraft and carrying through - creating a through point for a theatrical device.

David Bowie

devices creating thinking

I think Lindsay Kemp really introduced me to the work of Jean Genet, and through that, I kind of kept re-educating myself about other prose writers and poets.

David Bowie

poet kind thinking

I guess, - a greater number of the 26 or so albums that I've made are known in Europe than they are in America.

David Bowie

numbers europe america

Having not really written any generational songs - I think maybe two or three of the songs that I've ever written have any bearing on the age of the listener. My stuff tends to be far more concerned with the spiritual and with subjects like isolation and being miserable.

David Bowie

spiritual song thinking

I think getting married and then running away for 10 months would be an absolute disaster.

David Bowie

would-be running thinking

I don't think I did anything that my contemporaries didn't; it was just that I was the only one who talked about it. In the Sixties anyone who had a sense of style seemed to be gay. I wanted to indentify with that.

David Bowie

style gay thinking

When the musical keyboard was created in the 1970's, you had electronic geeks that had no background in music created these devises and gave them to musicians that had no background in electronics. The result was some of the wierd sounds that came out in the '70s.

David Bowie

musician musical sound

But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him.

David Bowie

legacy guy thinking

Ironically, style doesn't come even closely related to fashion. It's got nothing to do [with clothes].

David Bowie

clothes style fashion

If I wasn't going through a thing where I was also being my characters offstage, uh, I'm much happier just wearing the most low-profile things that I can come up with just so I can get down the street.