Wayne Coyne Quotations

I can see that if this was an album done 10 or 15 years ago we could see we were moving on to some place else.

We love it when we make mistakes that are better than something you could think up.

People have given me the freedom and believe in me enough to say if I want to do these things that I will find a way to make it work. I don't know if they think I'm crazy, drug damaged or just an old weirdo.

Music is amazing. There's some metaphysical comfort where it allows you to be isolated and alone while telling you that you are not alone... truly, the only cure for sadness is to share it with someone else.

I want people to be ecstatic but to cry at the same time.

Anyway, Cat Stevens is never going to make much money out of us.

I stopped caring so much about what people might think if I sung about love and humanity.

We made music that wouldn't be in synch.

With out art, without communicating, we wouldn't live beyond 30 because we'd be so sad and depressed.

I am not that thrilled about the way our records sound anyway. Don't get me wrong, I work hard on them and I want them to sound fantastic but I'm happy to have another interpretation of them anyway.

It really is no different in the way that we make records and shoot music videos. I don't think of the movie as being a great leap out of my current profession.

We love playing music but were too weird to play music.

If you have a song that you think sounds like another song you should contact the publishing company and say I have a song here, let's cut a deal that lets everyone walk away feeling good.

When we went to cover it I thought we would change it to a song of loving and longing instead of the sex machine song Kylie turned it into. I've met Kylie and told her we were covering her song and she was pleased.

Even in the beginning, when we knew there was a legal argument about how much our song sounds like his song, as one songwriter to another, I wasn't sure that Cat Stevens would take that as bad.

I knew she was from Australia and I knew that is where she started but I didn't know if she was still popular there. I hope people understand we aren't making fun of Kylie.

Our publicist at Warner Brothers is a young guy who has worked so hard for seven years with us and when we saw him backstage he broke down and cried. He couldn't believe it happened. It was seeing him so overcome when we realised how much it really meant.

We never thought it would be something everyone would listen to. We never thought people who listen to Britney Spears would run to listen to it. It was intended for people on the fanatical side of production and hi-fi.

There is a lot of melody and things that sound familiar in hundreds of songs.

I embrace the idea that I'm an entertainer.

Sometimes the song title comes with the songs, other times you just sorta make something up afterwards.

We hear so many records these days that are done with click tracks, as opposed to a drummer.

It was endlessly entertaining, watching people beat each other up. All the little kids in the neighborhood would come and watch... and then we'd beat them up as well.

Most artists I run into aren't that thrilled with what they do anyway. They are glad to have different versions out there to see which one the audience likes the best.

Most music that you hear is in synch with itself. We were experimenting with the music falling out of synch with itself and even though it is out of synch you mind can still understand what it is meant to be doing.

When we started there was this element of these experiments we were doing where we weren't really sure how the music would play out because the music was all on different players.

We remixed them in 5.1, which doesn't sound like much, but let me tell you it's really a crazy, complicated thing to take these things that you did almost 15 years ago and revisit 'em in this format that only became available a couple years ago. A lot of bands can't do that because they don't have their own recordings. But we've always recorded ourselves, so it's a matter of me just going to the back room and grabbing the tapes and sort of putting them back on the reel. It's a weird treat.

We're aware that we have to be marketable, because at the end of the day, it's about making money, ... So we try to make our albums a good blend of art and commercialism.

Music - music that moves you - usually comes because something horrible has happened to you. It's cathartic. I think music does that better than almost any other art form, because most of our lives are about things that don't work out.

We transferred it all down to computer land within the last couple of days,

It isn't all about some band promoting a single or a promoter trying to make money or something. (When they started), I think people just assumed it would be this disorganized thing.... The more these things work, the more they're successful, the better off these things will be.

People who listen to our music get it, and the ones that don't -- well, it's not for them anyway, ... Our audience is perfect for what we're doing. We don't feel under-appreciated at all.

I was in England and I know Cat Stevens told some journalists that he loved our song and was honoured that people compared our song to his song.

We really attempted it in a full-force Flaming Lips behemoth production style. We recorded 100 tracks of our beloved pedal steel guitar and 100 guitar overdubs for the music, and for the vocals we stacked all these crazy harmonies. We wanted to add different layers that people might expect from us, but we tried hard not to change the fundamental nature of the song.

We could take the movie around as well, and not just be playing as the Flaming Lips as a rock band. I'm thinking of taking it to theaters and having it be an experience where we bring in giant sound systems, smoke machines, Christmas lights, s--- falls on you from the ceiling and you can smoke pot and do whatever you want. There's something about the communal experience while something intense and unexpected is happening. I'm sure it will come out on DVD and there'll be a soundtrack, but that isn't the real experience.

There's something about whatever despair and whatever negativity there is in your life, once you expel it, well, it's like praying, saying whatever's troubling you through your mouth, and hearing it through your ears, participating in your own despair makes it better. So we're not making it for you like a birthday cake, we're making it for ourselves.

I understand that that song is what will stick out, ... And the guy on the street only needs to know what has become popular -- that's what is so good and powerful about the music industry. It's about appealing to masses of people with popular music. And hey, it's good that people know who you are.

People think its more high-tech than it really is with all the video and all that. It's still held together with duct tape.

This album is bigger and more lush than our previous stuff, ... We had the musicality and the ambition and the time to be more lush this time, to make more normal music.

They'd say, 'The Flaming Lips! And you won't believe it: They're from Oklahoma City!' as if we're from outer space, ... And we thought, 'That's a good thing.'

They're going to enjoy themselves almost regardless of what the bands do. We're just the dumb entertainment in the corner.

For fans of that record, this is going to be a very cool item. The Soft Bulletin gave us such a different perspective and a new life -- there's a richness there that will be fun to go back and revisit.

It's good that we have the potential in the marketplace to reach bigger audiences, ... We're three people who are interested in music as art, but most of it won't ever be marketed as popular stuff.

Their opinion can truly shape what the rest of the audience thinks of you.

In a way I hope we don't win because there are some fantastic records in the same category like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Radiohead and White Stripes.

I remember playing CBGB and thinking that no one had cleaned the toilets in there for at least six or seven years. Now maybe the women's bathroom is different but in the men's bathroom, you literally wouldn't want to stand there, let alone sit there. I mean, it's horrible.

In this gap where your mind is stretching itself to keep the music going it hits you as a new music experience. We were excited about it.

I think the more music becomes something you could simply download and have on your iPod, I think to a lot of people that is plenty, but to some people, they still want these artifacts that are touchable, and you can smell them, and look at them, and hold them and just have other dimensions of experience with this music.

Instagram is a great example of you just doing your thing.

I think I'm really lucky that the things I'm able to love - people, animals - it's like the more you put yourself into it, the more you get out of it.

Your life, unfortunately - and I mean this - your life is built on when love dies. There's a lot of love in your life that will simply die. And you wish that you died with it, you know? But you don't. And you go, oh, well, here I am.

Love is the thing that you pursue because it's the thing that gives you all this life, or you believe that, anyway.

I know that is absolutely true for people when they are young - you don't want to be alive if the things that you love in your life aren't there.

I think if you're lucky, you start to make music and it gets things out.

Eating good things and being around people who are happy - you want to be influenced by the world because it has so many cool things about it, but it also has a bunch of bad things about it. Being around people who are happy and people who are creative, that's what you do if you're lucky in your life.

Maybe there's some unquenchable question that I keep asking the universe that I can't get an answer to.

Occasionally there are people who are not like me, and I forget that they're more introverted or shy, or just don't want to make a decision so quickly.

I think that most of the people I'm dealing with, they're a lot like me. So I'm not pushing people that don't want to do something; most of the people have a billion things going on, and they love it.

Some people, they don't want to be that loved, they don't want to be that involved, they don't want to be part of your family. That's where the pain comes in. You want the world to be what you want it to be, and sometimes the world doesn't want that.

Everything that you do in your life that helps you sweat is good for you. Whenever you're sweating, you're adding to your potential to enjoy the day or enjoy the moment or enjoy your life.

I think that's what centers me the most - all my people, all my animals.

We wish that we could take magic drugs, play around all day, read, and do nothing strenuous, and be the smartest, happiest people in the world. The truth is, it's all about sweat.

I'm pouring my guts out so they can feel like your guts at the same time.

I remember when my father was dying, I remember listening to Bjork, and listening to John Coltrane, and these things, and I don't know why but music has the power to transcend your physical being and take you up just a little bit.

Music has the power to transcend your physical being and take you up. Because music has a metaphysical quality it really makes your life beautiful.

Life is worth celebrating and worth living even though we're all headed to the same hole at the end of the day.

I think some of the musicians are more like punk rock musicians. It's like an art as opposed to being a musician. It's definitely more radical psychedelic bands, more than anything.

I would say anybody who's willing to listen to Dark Side of the Moon and watch The Wizard of Oz is already a very sensitive, creative person.

Even though I don't have any kids of my own, I love this idea of family and taking care of things.

I'll accept the pain and the suffering, because I know that in that there's a lot of beauty, too.

Being around people who are happy and people who are creative, that's what you do if you're lucky in your life.

All the great things that I get to be curious about, see, and experience because I'm sensitive to the world, it also opens up these areas where there's a lot of pain and suffering. You're just aware, aware, aware.

We wouldn't be artists, writers, painters, musicians, if we weren't sensitive.

Love is not a magic gravity that keeps everything up.

Love is larger than life.

I want to know what you're thinking, you want to know what I'm thinking. But we're alone. In our own minds. We're trapped in this sort of isolation.

We are all really alone. We're isolated in our own mind.

We don't ever want to shut down and say, I'm afraid to go that far down the road because there's going to be pain. There'll be beauty, too, and if you stop here, you stop all that.

You want to be influenced by the world because it has so many cool things about it, but it also has a bunch of bad things about it.

Everything that you do in your life that helps you sweat is good for you.

The 'cool' record store. It is where you can talk to people who are like you. They look like you, think like you and, most tellingly like the same music as you - the only comparable experience these days would probably be an art museum - an actual place where you can stand and simply be surrounded by your heroes.

When I do yoga, it gets all sweaty, and the best thing for dried up hair isn't shampoo, it's sweat.

Advertising agencies come to you and they are great fans, they are great creative people themselves, but they ask you to do something, and you say, "Well, we will, we'll create something together." And it is work. It's like you're doing something and they're saying, "Change this" and "Change that." It's not hard, horrible work, but creatively it's not just freedom.

I think it's probably a good thing to be considered stable, but with a capacity for madness.

To try to please people is an endless chasing of one's own tail. That's not very satisfying, so we do what we like and that satisfies us. When it does work out, its a bonus, really.

If SANTA CLAUS came down the chimney in a f**king jogging suit, you wouldn't even know it was him.

I want to be able to shoot laser beams out of my hands at people. That's the kind of stuff that you think all bands should do, but they don't, and I can't understand why most bands don't want to do it.

Your life is built on when love dies.

You want the world to be what you want it to be, and sometimes the world doesn't want that.

It is comforting to know that there is at least one place where we can go and be confident that we will find an audience thirsting to find new music. Paste Magazine is that place. It's loss would create a very large black hole.

There's a cave, we go inside of ourselves because we want to know more, and we turn this one corner and we go, Oh my god - I didn't know that was in here. We can never go back to the way we were. It's like a horrible car accident - you're never the same after that. It's something that you'll think about every day for the rest of your life.

Sometimes you just have to say, “...I don't know what we are doing, let's just go and see what happens.” You have to embrace the experience itself, so that things you didn't intend to happen can make your work more authentic. And you have to hope that it works

As you get older, you accept that there are some tunnels that don't have any light in them, but you go down them anyway.

A lot of times I'll doodle on something while I'm doing interviews, because sometimes I'm on the phone for three or four hours and I want to get something going. I'll just start from a scribble, or something that someone else already put on the page.

We want, or wanted, to believe that without love we would disappear, that love, somehow, would save us that, yeah, if we have love, give love and know love, we are truly alive and if there is no love, there would be no life. The Terror is, we know now, that even without love, life goes on... we just go on there is no mercy killing.

I wish I did believe in God. It would be a great relief to think, 'God'll take care of it. God'll put gas in the car tomorrow'

Keeping perspective and being happy and being energetic and being creative - that's all tied to being healthy.

The things that affect you most deeply - the things that will destroy you if you don't sing about them - are the things that you often end up singing about. It's really just about saying those things that everybody thinks but no one will say and making a connection by uncovering these diamonds that are inside of all of us that no one wants to tell each other about.

Try to be happy within the context of the life we are actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for or a convergence of lucky happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves.