Quotes By Brian Eno

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don't fit in a very interesting way.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important.

I don't live in the past at all; I'm always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn't bother to find new ones.

I'm very good with technology, I always have been, and with machines in general. They seem not threatening like other people find them, but a source of fun and amusement.

I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.

I'm not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

I take sounds and change them into words.

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.

I often work by avoidance.