Top 60 Devendra Banhart Quotes

I’ve always lived in small places.

Leigh Bowery is a legend. Everybody loves Leigh Bowery. Everybody should love Leigh Bowery.

I aspire to feel like a child, how about that!

Am I a pro-cult person? In no way!

John Cage is someone I got into as a visual artist, before I even knew his music. I don’t think a lot of people even know that he does visual art.

My interested in Brazilian music stemmed from wanting to find a musical identity other than the salsa and meringue that I was inundated with in Venezuela as a child.

I’ve got a long list of things I consider to be selling out. But amongst that list, one of them is when you make art without putting your guard down.

Pay attention to your breathing.

I don’t even know what a hippy is. I mean, hippy is an evolution of the Sixties movement. A time when people were trying to make a difference, trying to write songs that were political. People grow old. The hippy camp kind of breaks off into different sects.

I look at making records like you make a dish. A culinary experience. The way you throw in a tambourine, it’s like spices or herbs. The main part of the song is the stock.

I was just a huge fan of Blur, Suede, Elastica and Pulp, of course, even Menswear and Ocean Colour Scene.

I support things that are very close to my heart: mostly LGBTQ rights.

Real hippies don’t like me at all. They can smell a real hippy.

I practice Rasayana Buddhism.

Generally, I can’t really do much without music playing – even writing or thinking. Peace and quiet means putting on a song.

In the past, I had this open-door policy where everyone was invited. And that was awesome, but you end up releasing songs that you don’t really like and justifying it in your head.

I can’t imagine anyone approaching art without the joy of experimentation. The joy of it is inherent… and that is how you flow with the reality of change.

I can see my songs in a movie as long as it’s a movie no one will watch.

We all have our vices, you know. One of my vices is ice cream.

The first paid show was in Los Angeles at an art opening and I was paid maybe, I don’t know, twenty five bucks?

I love Meredith Monk, and with Instagram, I get a chance to see if she has a cat, and what’s she reading.

I’m just trying to make rent and do my work.

I don’t think I’m getting better, quote unquote, as a singer or guitar player. But I’m more comfortable in this particular space. I get better at being a bad singer, so to speak.

R. Kelly is my favorite singer.

It’s all about sensitivity. If you have sensitivity then mysticism will be part of your life.

No one’s fearless. We’re all full of fear. But can your fear guide you or lean into it, embrace it.

I do have very small handwriting.

One not-to-be-mentioned major said they would sign me if I worked with a team of songwriters to help me finish songs, ha! Of course, in hindsight, I should’ve done it just to see what that would have been like.

I might have some delusions of grandeur.

I like clothes. I really do. I like going through colors, in a way. I go, ‘Greens, man. Greens. Oh, yellow. This yellow feels good.’ So it shapes your psyche in a way. But I don’t think about it too much, even though I’m interested in it.

I’ve always said that musicians are the comics of my generations and comedians are the politicians of my generation.

I was born in Texas, you know. I was born in Houston.

Something I practice everyday is Tonglin. It’s Tibetan for taking and receiving.

Good art doesn’t really have an expiration date on it.

Well I am a Gemini.

With music there’s so many limbs and facets. Video and touring and merchandise and all those little things require attention. They’re artist things but I tend to joke around too much with those things.

Coming to Canada, I’d really like to see Sasquatch.

I love Oasis.

Well, love is a difficult thing to hold on to. It’s a slippery little beast. It will hold you and then it will elude you at any moment.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a friend tell me, in this tender and discreet voice, ‘It’s just you and me bro, and I want to tell you the truth: make a record of you and an acoustic guitar. Please. That’s what everybody actually likes.’ That’s so funny to me.

I meditate.’ That’s like saying ‘I eat.’ Think of all the food there is! And there are almost as many varieties of mediation.

I sometimes think a movement as rich and wild and incredible as Tropicalismo wouldn’t have survived without incredibly catchy music.

I sometimes feel like I should be in the hotel business.

A soul singer is always singing to their crowd. They’re always singing about their woes to you. And I really appreciate that when a singer is making you feel… when they’re directing it at me. When they’re including me.

My number-one hero in terms of interdisciplinary art is Laurie Anderson, but I’ve always admired anyone who can think way beyond any one medium.

Anne Imhof is a powerful artist from Germany making work that is totally interdisciplinary.

I’m deeply conservative and I’m profoundly boring.

Grizzly Bear’s ‘Knife’ is one of the best videos of all time – everything Encyclopedia Pictura has done is really incredible.

I want to say that Beck is incredible. He is an art machine.

I believe we are all dual beings. Some cultures actually believe we have two souls.

Green is one of my favorite colors.

Canada has really grown and grown as this unexplored and very mysterious and exotic place to me.

I try to listen to as much as possible. I know some people really try to avoid music when they’re writing and recording, but I am very inspired by so many different musicians, and I need to learn.

I grew up around so much new agey stuff. Part of me takes it lightly because I’m so used to it. It was my parents. It wasn’t some path I discovered and want to share with people. It’s just been a very natural part of my life. There’s humor to it and there’s seriousness to it, too.

Caracas was a crazy place in the early Nineties. For instance, when I was 11 years old, I pierced my ear. No big deal, right? But everyone was so scandalised that they shut down the school.

Personally speaking, Canada is becoming more and more beguiling and mysterious and I feel as though I really need to explore it.

I guess I don’t want everyone to know what I’m doing every second.

I come from a school of artists, the Mission School in San Francisco, and there are a lot of artists I look up to.

Dad had four world records, and they happened to be Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ali Farka Toure. I tried singing like these people, and it didn’t work.

I’ve always thought it’d be nice to be seaweed, kind of just floating about.