Brian Eno Quotes

I write the music, produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set.

My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.

I'm in deep in everything, every moment of the day. I create the systems and oversee every aspect of the execution. Every mark on a sculpture and every brush-stroke on a painting is in a controlled situation, exactly as they'd be if I'd have done them myself.

I don't do much press. I don't like to talk about my music too much before I do it.

Isn't composing music akin to film direction?

Sometimes it takes us a long time to build up songs, and we really work the structures over and over and build in lots of noisy parts.

We actually make all of our own music videos. Often we come up with the visual concepts at the same time as writing the music.

A craftsman knows in advance what the finished result will be, while the artist knows only what it will be when he has finished it.

If you do improvising, it can sometimes end up being a waste of time. And if you do that, it's more or less based on a writing process.

You take all the time to write a song: you have to let it ooze on out by its natural self and that is pretty time consuming. Then you teach it to the band so everybody gets all the parts. Then you rehearse it and road test it, and all that. Then you get to the studio and there is a new guy in the band who calls himself the producer, right? Huh. He either makes it or breaks it usually before nightfall.

Any time I am involved in something from conception to execution, that's obviously a lot more personal, and I'm going to be more invested in it than something where I just show up for a couple days, shoot, and leave.

I've always written my own scripts, I really like doing everything from the beginning and taking it all the way through, I've probably learned that from my dad.

[...] beer results in ideas, which results in new code.

The fact was I had the vision... I think everyone has... what we lack is the method.

There is a certain thing that you have to just stick to the plan, stick to what you want to do, and you try to work with studios and executives that they get it.

Express yourself, put stuff down on tape, and see what lives.

Sometimes I'm in the studio, sometimes I'm not. It's about delivering the music to the artist, but it's also about the inspiration.

You go in and record and sing them some and you go back in and rerecord and sing them some more. That's kind of how I did this album [The Art of Elegance].

Ideas are cheap. I have more ideas now than I could ever write up. To my mind, it's the execution that is all-important.

Planning to write is not writing.

People used to envy me my inspiration. I hate inspiration. It takes you over completely. I could never wait until it passed and I got rid of it.

Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.

I really spend as long as I can sketching everything out and working on the structure before I sit down to type out scenes.

Sometimes when I'm writing a song I'll get carried away with production when I'm only on the first verse, and that sacrifices the songwriting.

All your ideas may be solid or even good .. But you have to Actually EXECUTE on them for them to matter.