Quotes By Brian Eno

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

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.

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.

If you're in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.

It's not the destination that matters. It's the change of scene.

If you watch any good player, they're using different parts of their body and working with instruments that respond to those movements. They're moving in many dimensions at once.

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.

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.

If you want to make someone feel emotion, you have to make them let go. Listening to something is an act of surrender.

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I'm sort of building up to doing something else quite soon.

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!

I hate the rock music tradition. I can't bear it!

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.

I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.

I have a definite talent for convincing people to try something new. I am a good salesman. When I'm on form, I can sell anything.

For me it's always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it's always sound first and then the line afterwards.

Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it.

I see TV as a picture medium rather than a narrative medium.

The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work.

I enjoy working with complicated equipment. A lot of my things started just with a rhythm box, but I feed it through so many things that what comes out sounds very complex and rich.

Every collaboration helps you grow. With Bowie, it's different every time. I know how to create settings, unusual aural environments. That inspires him. He's very quick.

I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.

I've discovered this new electronic technique that creates new speech out of stuff that's already there.

When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.

Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It's inevitable.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.