Brian Eno Quotes

Author Image

Brian Eno

Profession : Musician

Birth : May 15, 1948

Something I've realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we're smart about it.

Brian Eno

The Marshall guitar amplifier doesn't just get louder when you turn it up. It distorts the sound to produce a whole range of new harmonics, effectively turning a plucked string instrument into a bowed one.

Brian Eno

The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another.

Brian Eno

By the mid-'60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.

Brian Eno

If you are part of a religion that very strongly insists that you believe then to decide not to do that is quite a big hurdle to jump over. You never forget the thought process you went through. It becomes part of your whole intellectual picture.

Brian Eno

The artists of the past who impressed me were the ones who really focused their work.

Brian Eno

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

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.

Brian Eno

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

Brian Eno

I'm very opinionated.

Brian Eno

For instance, I'm always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before.

Brian Eno

A way to make new music is to imagine looking back at the past from a future and imagine music that could have existed but didn't. Like East African free jazz, which as far as I know does not exist.

Brian Eno

Painting, I think it's like jazz.

Brian Eno

I used to think that, given enough goodwill, anybody would be able to 'get' any music, no matter how distant the culture from which it came. And then I heard Chinese opera.

Brian Eno

Our experience of any painting is always the latest line in a long conversation we've been having with painting. There's no way of looking at art as though you hadn't seen art before.

Brian Eno