A biography for Devendra Banharthasn’t been written yet.
“Generally, I can't really do much without music playing - even writing or thinking. Peace and quiet means putting on a song.”
“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.”
“As I get older, there's this new realisation and it's almost like a relief, and that is that I can never be who I once was, but only who I want to become.”
“I've always thought it'd be nice to be seaweed, kind of just floating about.”
“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.”
“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.”
“We all have our vices, you know. One of my vices is ice cream.”
“I don't ever think of myself as a dark person or a ruined person in any way. I just feel happy to be alive, and to be able to love.”
“I'm just trying to make rent and do my work.”
“R. Kelly is my favorite singer.”
“Of all my childhood books, 'The Giving Tree and Hope for the Flowers' really did change my early world, but after reading 'Momo' in my 30s, I thought, Ahhhhhh, this is the one book I wish I had read as a kid! Then reread at every subsequent chapter of my life.”
“It's very powerful to shut down your computer and escape into the real world.”
“I sometimes think a movement as rich and wild and incredible as Tropicalismo wouldn't have survived without incredibly catchy music.”
“I'm deeply conservative and I'm profoundly boring.”
“Coming to Canada, I'd really like to see Sasquatch.”
“I love Meredith Monk, and with Instagram, I get a chance to see if she has a cat, and what's she reading.”
“As anthropomorphic and surreal people have said my early writing was, to me it was really stock and almost banal in the sense that it was just description, the poetry of comparing: 'Your feet are like A, and your eyes like B.'”
“I've been doing visual stuff for as long as I've been making records; in fact, for longer.”
“At some point in your life, if you live in Venezuela, you come across or own a cuatro. Either at school, either at camp, either at a friend's house, at a birthday or Christmas or bar mitzvah, you end up with a cuatro. It's like a must.”
“When the Internet came along, the first thing I did was look up Wu-Tang so I could print out their symbol and glue it onto my skateboard.”