Talking Heads Quotes

Today's internet bloggers and television's talking heads don't have that [a partnership]. No safety net. No brakes. No one there to question, doubt or inspire. No editor. [Carl Bernstein's A reporter's assessment] ~ Bob Woodward

I don't care how impossible it seems. ~ David Byrne

I hear all the time that 'unemployment is greatly reduced, but the people aren't feeling it.' When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth - the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real - then we will quit wondering why Americans aren't 'feeling' something that doesn't remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class. ~ Jim Clifton

I don't think that the punk sound really became the punk sound until much later. The punk era wasn't really just one musical sound. There are a lot of differences among Television, the Ramones, and the Talking Heads. ~ Debbie Harry

The trouble with the British is that they are not interested in ideas. If Jesus came back today and offered to speak for an hour on British television, they would say, What! Another talking head? ~ John Cleese

On TV, talking heads wrung their hands over a lack of traditional feminine values and wondered if girls' sports were to blame. Then they cut to a commercial featuring a sexy college coed vacuuming her dorm room in her underwear. ~ Libba Bray

So I make no effort to hide my pain. I don't ever put it all on display like this - but for today and all the rest of the days of the trial, I must. My every flinch, every flicker of pain, will be
magnified a hundred times over, then dissected by the pundits and talking heads. But I'm told it's necessary; the world needs to see me vulnerable and wounded. I cannot appear not to care or to lack remorse, but that removes a crucial component of my self- defense mechanism and leaves me bleeding for all the world to see. I suppose that's rather the point. ~ Ann Aguirre

I don't want the stage. I'm terrified of giving these talking heads some distraction, some excuse to jeopardize, smear, and delegitimize a very important movement. ~ Edward Snowden

There are lots of guns and action in my drawings, and part of that is just to make them more interesting. Because you can go through a whole film and it's mostly talking heads and little else until the action scenes, and they're usually violence or physical stuff. Same with baseball, or any sport. Except I find pitching and batting are visually very striking. ~ Raymond Pettibon

According to the science writer Philip Ball, when it was pointed out to musicologist Deryck Cooke
that Slavic and much Spanish music use minor keys for happy music, he claimed that their lives
were so hard that they didn't really know what happiness was anyway. ~ David Byrne

My favorite band is probably The Cure. We can throw Talking Heads in there too, I listen to them a lot. But The Cure. ~ Analeigh Tipton

But the point is, the talking heads are wrong. The loss won't bring back a simpler time. Only a search for something new to fill the void. ~ Wayne Gladstone

My team and I used the actual footage to create a three-act story of the life of Ayrton Senna. There are no talking heads and no voiceover. Senna narrates his own epic, dramatic, thrilling journey. ~ Asif Kapadia

Not winning a title gives fuel to sportswriters and talking heads who question an athlete's true value. ~ Don Yaeger

The last thing I want to become is one of those talking heads where everything is satiny smooth and you know what the next question is going to be. ~ Isaac Mizrahi

I don't want to spend my entire life drawing talking heads. It seems like a waste of everyone's time. ~ Bryan Lee O'Malley

I made several short films with very little dialogue. I'm still not a fan of talking heads. My stories are told with images as much as possible. ~ Asif Kapadia

I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators. ~ Asif Kapadia

The gap (between intellectuals and politicians) divides writing hands, talking heads and thinking minds of this country into two sections. One section flaunts academic achievements to make up for shortfalls in intelligence. The other asserts intelligence to camouflage deficiencies in academic excellence. In short, our intellectuals are torn by the dilemma whether they ought to carry their brains in their mouths, or mouths in their brains. ~ Mohammad Badrul Ahsan

Euro currency to dissolve due to sovereign debt crisis," the talking heads grimly proclaimed. ~ L. Todd Wood

A friend of mine introduced me to Thurston Moore because she thought I would like him. He was playing with the tallest band in the world, the Coachmen. They were sort of like Talking Heads, jangly guitar, Feelies guitar. Anyway, it was love at first sight. His band broke up that night. And we started playing. ~ Kim Gordon

The Islamophobia phobes, (ph) the writers and the editors and the talking heads who deny an existence of evil while blaming those who speak up. There no difference - different than the apologists for communism. As communism killed millions, they, they denied it. ~ Greg Gutfeld

Zach, it doesn't matter which talking heads the Republicrats put up as their candidates. Either way you're voting to maintain the status quo. Is that what you want?"
"Ummm...."
"Are you pro-choice?"
"Sure, I guess." Abortion's not something a gay man has to think about often.
"And you must be in favour of allowing gays to marry?"
"Of course." But I'd have to be dating someone first, right?
"And you believe in the decriminalization of marijuana?"
"I suppose." There was no way i was going to to argue with a man who sold bongs for a living on that one.
"Don't you think you should be able to vote against our out-of-control welfare state without having to vote against those basic rights? Basic rights which should be protected by our constitution?"
"Well-"
"Have you even read the constitution, Zach?"
"I don't think so," I admitted in surprise.
He shook his head at me. "Neither has the president, Zach. Think about that."
He left a stack of pamphlets on the counter and headed for Ruby's. It was going to be a long campaign season. ~ Marie Sexton

Patience is a virtue but I don't have the time. ~ David Byrne

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around. ~ David Byrne

The only ingenuity I can see is Gaddis' wherewithal in getting this brick published, printed, and hyped-up enough to win the National Book Award. Did he use coercion, bribery, blackmail perhaps? Did he have incriminating evidence on certain influential literary critics and talking heads, like pictures of them with farm animals or something? ~ A. Cretan

She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year. "A few hundred," she said.
"How do you have the time?" he asked, gobsmacked.
She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pre-game, in-game, and post-game talking heads? Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati? Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in reflective surfaces? I am reading!
"I don't know," she said, shrugging. ~ Eleanor Brown

One of my favourite things to do when I write is to bring a sense of wonder to a normal everyday setting... Yes, there are magical elements, but there are also very down-to-earth elements and often what shines through isn't the magic, but the lanterns that the characters light against the dark... If you substitute the words "fairy tale" or "myth" for "fantasy," the reason I use these elements in my own work is that they create resonances that illuminate solutions to the real world struggle without the need for an authorial voice to point them out. Magic never solves the problems–we have to do that on our own–but in fiction it allows the dialogue to have a much more organic approach than the talking heads one can encounter in fiction that doesn't utilize the same tools.

[from the interview Year's Best 2012: Charles de Lint on "A Tangle of Green Men"] ~ Charles De Lint

There are people who tell you to shut up because you're just a celebrity, but pundits, talking heads, they're every bit the celebrity and a lot of them aren't any more qualified than the average man on the street. ~ Kevin Bacon

say something once,
why say it again? ~ Talking Heads

Advancing the agenda of America's wealthiest winners under such circumstances would ordinarily be a hard sell. After all, in 2011, twenty-four million Americans were still out of work. The Great Recession had wiped out some $9 trillion in household wealth. But after forty years, the conservative nonprofit ecosystem had grown quite adept at waging battles of ideas. The think tanks, advocacy groups, and talking heads on the right sprang into action, shaping a political narrative that staved off the kind of course correction that might otherwise have been expected. ~ Jane Mayer

First, they set the hook with mind-bending kinky shit. Then a year later you're living in a Talking Heads song, dressed like Teddy Ruxpin, living with a strange woman in a big house full of frilly throw pillows, experiencing the frequency of sex that can only be charted by Halley's Comet. and you're wondering: How did I get here? ~ Tim Dorsey

But since death is inevitable we don't have to deal with it (it'll deal with us when it decides to). What we do have to deal with is the psychic, physical, and fusion diseases wrought during our so-called lives as byproducts of the elemental clash. In other words we're all terminally psychotic and no doctor, hospital, pill, needle, book or guru holds the cure. Because the disease is called life and there is no cure for that but death and death's just part of the set-up designed to keep you terrified and thus in bondage from the cradle to the crypt so ha ha the joke's on you except there's no punchline and the comedian forgot you ever existed as even a comma. ~ Lester Bangs

Talking Heads, for me and Chris, was a very personal thing that we shared with a lot of people. In a way, I'm glad it's over, because it allows us to move beyond the restrictions that followed. ~ Tina Weymouth

When I was thirteen I spent a lot of time pretending to like dance music because everyone at my school seemed to love it. If only I'd known it was OK to have different tastes to others and that one day my mind would be blown open by an older man who would introduce me to The Smiths, The Cure, Buzzcocks, Talking Heads and almost every other band I adore to this day. I also wish I'd been reassured that one day, yes, a boy would actually fancy me in spite and potentially, deliberately, FOR my zero boob/skinny legs combo. But mainly I wish I'd listened to my mother when she said learning to play the piano might come in handy in the future and would actually be something I would thank her for forcing me to do. Every Wednesday we would drive to Mrs Batten's house listening to The ArchersI, with me in the passenger seat trying desperately to think up excuses for why I hadn't practiced that week. Though it seemed very unlikely at the time, I am thankful for those piano lessons every time I manage to impress a boy by hammering out some Chopin when drunk (swot up, kids!). ~ Alexa Chung

It seemed like a hybrid of Spinal Tap, the British The Office, and something entirely original. Scenes would be blocked and rehearsed almost like a play, with entire scenes performed top to bottom many times. Two or three cameras would find the action and just follow the actors as they moved around. Actors often didn't know when they were on camera or where the cameras were. "Spy shots" lent a sense of intimacy to moments. Actors were allowed to look into the camera to show their reactions to things and spoke directly to the camera with "talking heads," used to further the story or display another side of what a character was feeling.15, 16 Camera operators were very close or very far away but a dynamic part of the action. We would shoot eight or nine pages in a twelve-hour day, which is about double what one shoots on a feature film. ~ Amy Poehler

Teaching by example, radical obedience, justice, mercy, activism, and sacrifice wholly inspires me. I'm at that place where "well done" trumps "well said." When I see kingdom work in the middle of brokenness, when mission transitions from the academic soil of the mind into the sacrificial work of someone's hands, I am utterly affected. Obedience inspires me. Servant leaders inspire me. Humility inspires me. Talking heads dissecting apologetics stopped inspiring me a few years ago. ~ Jen Hatmaker

By the time Talking Heads were starting, my feeling was to throw out everything and start from scratch onstage; strip it down to as close to zero as you can get and then you can make it yours. ~ David Byrne

Occasionally, I hanker for the time when I sold more records, but I don't sit and drool about it. When I do look at early footage of Talking Heads, I realise I was just a wreck. ~ David Byrne

I mean, the trouble with some of the kind of relationship movies I've done, is there's only so many ways you can shoot a conversation. I was really tired of talking heads. ~ Lawrence Kasdan

I grew up with The Beatles, Bob Marley and Talking Heads. I like the melody-with-rhythm aspect of music - there's so much to discover still. ~ Albert Hammond, Jr.

When Talking Heads started, we called ourselves Thinking Man's Dance Music. ~ Tina Weymouth

The thing I've learned traveling through the United States is that the people in each city are usually awesome, it's generally the 'talking heads' that give us trouble. ~ Christopher Sieber

I can't think of any musician or producer who has influenced me more than Brian Eno. From when he was in Roxy Music, producing Devo, the Talking Heads and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. ~ Moby

I think in daily newspapers, the way comic strips are treated, it's as if newspaper publishers are going out of their way to kill the medium. ~ Matt Groening

When I was little, people like Talking Heads were on the radio. There was something geeky yet groundbreaking about them. ~ Bat For Lashes

I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk. ~ Dean Wareham

For earthly princes lay aside their power when they rise up against God, and are unworthy to be reckoned among the number of mankind. We ought, rather, to spit upon their heads than to obey them. ~ John Calvin

Science usually operates in sort of three modes, things that are well established, we know what we're talking about, more highly confident. There are competing explanations, we have a pretty good idea, but we're not sure. And then things are speculative. ~ Stephen Schneider

I gave her a look. "Rachel."
"Grace, you have to admit this is pretty weird. Say it. You disappearing from the hospital and Olivia is - and Sam suddenly shows up with you and, well, the freaky hallucinogenic mushrooms are looking more and more realistic, especially when you start talking about wolves. Because next step is for Isabel Culpeper to show up saying that everybody's going to be abducted by aliens and I have to tell you,I can't take that in my fragile emotional state. I think that - "
I sighed. "Rachel."
"Fine," she said. She threw her bag in the backseat and climbed in after. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Women have their heads in their hearts. Man seems to have been destined for a superior being; as things are, I think women generally better creatures than men. They have weaker appetites and weaker intellects but much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost forever. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I'm not singing for the future
I'm not dreaming of the past
I'm not talking of the fist time
I never think about the last ~ Shane MacGowan

I know a lot of people have a hard time talking dirty - they dont know what to say, how to start, or when to end it. Also, at first they will think they sound ridiculous. And they might. But let me just say that talking dirty is so important in sex. And its pretty easy. To wit: Establish from the very beginning that you like this. And trust me, you want to do it early on. Because if you wait too long to introduce the concept, your Special Lady Friend will be a little thrown and might not take you seriously. ~ Olivia Munn

Suppose you had the revolution you are talking and dreaming about. Suppose your side had won, and you had the kind of society that you wanted. How would you live, you personally, in that society? Start living that way now! ~ Paul Goodman

The world may not applaud us for wiping running noses, driving in carpools, or talking with our teenager into the wee hours of the morning. And until they are trained, our children might not thank us either. But as we set aside our own selfish desires and glorify God by joyfully serving our children, we are pursuing true greatness according to the Bible. Let us do so with tenderness, affection, and with a smile! ~ Carolyn Mahaney

Kat is talking to someone else now, a slender brown-skinned boy who's joined the line just behind her. He's dressed like a skater, so I assume he has a PhD in artificial intelligence. ~ Robin Sloan

I'll do shoes for the lady who lunches, but it would be, like, a really nasty lunch, talking about men. But where I draw the line, what I absolutely won't do, is the lady who plays bridge in the afternoon! ~ Christian Louboutin

If you don't back it up with performance and hard work, talking doesn't mean a thing. ~ Michael Jordan

Awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters. ~ C.S. Lewis

I think everything should happen at halfway to dawn. That's when all the heads of government should meet. I think everybody would fall in love. ~ Billy Strayhorn

I don't think you should go around talking trash about people because I think that's how you get your hat handed to you. ~ LL Cool J

I don't think I am especially interested in celebrities, but I love talking about what is going on with people and why they do what they do. ~ Ben Whishaw

Being a mum makes you more aware of how short life is and how important it is to enjoy every minute because you have less time for yourself. A day doesn't have 24 hours any more - it only lasts 10, or eight. So you learn to get rid of all the parasites. I'm not talking about people, but things that could be toxic for happiness. ~ Ludivine Sagnier

Just a guy. A college-aged guy. Talking to Chloe.
I watched him bend over the table, hands planted on it, his gaze fixed on Chloe, his lips parting in a smile as he said something to her. A slow burn started in my gut, and before I could stop myself, I was barreling down on them, Simon's protests fading behind me. ~ Kelley Armstrong

It was like setting up a guillotine in the public square.You don't expect a thousand people to line up to put their heads in it. ~ Dave Eggers

You see, we all want the same things. We want to be able to take care of our families, provide for our children, to have a roof over our heads and a good-paying job. ~ Dennis Hastert

At 1:00 a.m., they were in the Welsh pub again, having drinks and talking opera and football. ~ John Grisham

Then I spotted Kitty, Keyonna and JoJo. Kitty's hair was now blonde and Keyonna's hair was now red. JoJo and Kitty were in a huddle talking and Keyonna was pacing back and forth, looking like a nervous wreck. ~ Myiesha

Are you gay?" asked Michael with a sigh. "Is that your truth?" "Mmmhmm," Tristan said into the night. "Yep. Totally gay. And I'm apparently a chick too, because here we are, talking instead of screwing. ~ Z.A. Maxfield

Talking about golf is always boring. Playing golf can be interesting, but not the part where you try to hit the little ball; only the part where you drive the cart. ~ Dave Barry

From the necks up ... well, whoever said two heads are better than one never met a hydra. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

Speak for yourself,' said Danny Hislop. 'I'm held together by intellectual curiosity. So are we all. We were wonderfully specious at Novgorod - Best will remember - about our reasons for staying in Russia. No one gave the correct one. You can hate a man and stay in his company because of his sheer, God-given, irresistible powers to stimulate. We all liked fighting, and we liked talking about fighting. With Lymond you don't talk about fighting; you discuss the art of warfare, and then its philosophy, and then ten dozen other subjects all through the night, or for as long as he has patience to stay with you. I thought, God help me, that you were all trailing through Europe because you were enamoured of him. It wasn't that in the least.'

'We loved his mind,' said Adam Blacklock, with sudden terrible bitterness. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

I'm merely talking about learning to be less bothered by the actions of people. ~ Richard Carlson

I worked in TV for a short time and couldn't stand the fact that we'd always be filming someone talking, just giving information. ~ Asif Kapadia

As to my mouth, of all my features, I wish I could possess my mouth again, just as it had been before the fire. I had my mother's lips, generous below and above; and what kissing I had practiced, mainly on my hand or on a lonely pig, had convinced me that my lips would be the source of my good fortune. I would kiss with them, and lie with them, I would make victims and willing slaves of anyone my eyes desired, simply by talking a little, and following the talk with kisses, and the kisses with demands. And they'd melt into compliance, everyone of them, happy to perform the most demeaning acts as long as I was there to reward them with a long, tongue-tied kiss when they were done. But the fire didn't spare my lips; it took them too, erasing them utterly. ~ Clive Barker

In the mid-1980s, there was a grassroots desire for American culture. Maybe it was not a definite harbinger to what was to come in terms of the fall of the Soviet Union, but it certainly gave a heads up to the global merging of the retail culture. ~ Brian Shactman

The 2 hardest things you'll have to do when running a company are recruiting and talking people out of leaving. ~ Marc Andreessen

I want to fight, Becky. Can you understand that? I want struggle, I want danger. You know, Sally said something to me once: we were talking about happiness and what that might mean. She said she didn't want to be /happy/, that was a weak, passive sort of thing; she wanted to be alive and active. She wanted /work/. That's the spirit I like. That's what I want; and my work is a rough dirty dangerous kind of work. Oh, I want other things too. I want to write a play and see Henry Irving perform in it. I want to swank about town smoking Havanas and have supper with pretty girls in the Cafe Royal. I want to play poker on a Mississippi riverboat. I want to see Dan Goldberg get into Parliament. I want to see you go to university and get a first-class degree. Sally ... Sally can do anything we wants, by me. There's a whole world I want, Becky. ~ Philip Pullman

Mortals seldom know how greatly they are influenced by fairies, knooks and ryls, who often put thoughts into their heads that only the wise little immortals could have conceived. ~ L. Frank Baum

Like I was saying this morning, I've done some awful things in my life. I was pretty self-centered. And it's too late to erase it all now, you know? But when I listen to this music it's like Beethoven's right here talking to
me, telling me something like, It's okay, Hoshino, don't worry about it. That's life. I've done some pretty awful things in my life too. Not much you can do about it. Things happen. You just got to hang in there. ~ Haruki Murakami

The faces of your young people in general are not interesting - I don't mean the children, but the young men and women - and they are awkward and clownish in their manners, without the quaintness of the elder generation, who are the funniest old dears in the world." "They will all be quaint enough as they get older. You must remember the sort of life they lead. They get their notions very slowly, and they must have notions in their heads before they can show them on their faces. ~ Thomas Hughes

It's funny; it's a real balancing act. In TV, everybody's talking about authenticity. In order to make 'Dirty Jobs' authentic, I really can't be overly informed. The minute I am, I become a host ... It's a very tricky business paying a tribute to work, because TV is very bad at it. ~ Mike Rowe