Status Updates From David Bowie: A Life

“I’m so glad I took the time to tell him I was so grateful for his presence in my life, because he changed my life forever.” (p.463)

“To be so creative right up to the end, that’s brave, that’s special.” (p.474)

“I have such respect for people who have that degree of celebrity who can die privately.” (p.495)

“All of this was carefully planned, to become a work of death art.” (p.499)

David said that he and Eno were talking about existentialism. And he said that that’s when everything changed, when his whole vibe of music changed. p.426

I’m not so sure that there is any purpose, and that the thing that really starts to confound me. Because it’s contradictory. I don’t do it with a sinking sense of negativity; I can actually feel quite content with the idea that nothing’s important. p.459

I told him Emma and I had been painting. He said he’d been wondering if God existed. p392

…sometimes when he thought it had gotten too highbrow he would say with a smile, ‘It’s only rock and roll.’ p.412

Even as a young man I was always aware that death was the one absolute certainty about life. It didn’t reduce my feeling of buoyancy, it pushed me into a kind of colossal, obsessive activity. p.417

“Iman was really good for David, as she made him happy. You could it in their eyes.” (p.361)

“Bowie was someone who had really been able to hold on to who he was, but at the same time sit with what he had become.” (p.383)

“David was definitely someone who every day woke up and wanted to learn things.” (p.385)

“I think perhaps he looked for brother-type figures throughout his life.” (p.335)

“His big thing was challenging people to explore to the full what they might be…There may have been many people who have liberated us politically, but David liberated us emotionally, sexually. Ultimately, he wanted to set people free.” (p.337)

“I thanked him numerous times and I thanked him right until he died.” (p.345)

“Yes, I’m just a cunt in a clown suit.” (p.287)

“That was David through and through, being an enigma that everyone thought they knew.” (p.327)

“Just before David went on, Freddie [Mercury] winked at [David Bowie] and said, ‘If I didn’t know you better, dear, I’d have to eat you.’ No wonder David went out onstage with such a big smile on his face.” (p.327)

“He was the bridge between the old and the new.” (p.247)

“Like the Beatles in the 60s, he signaled cultural shifts. He’s the 70s Beatles, in that respect.” (p.252)

“They use ‘Heroes’ for every heroic event, although it’s a song about alcoholics.” (p.263)

“David had a lovely saying, ‘Let go, or be dragged.’…David would introduce something and leave it.” (p.281)

“He had to have cartilage removed from one part of his body and put in his nose because the coke had eaten his nose cartilage away.” (p.196)

“Jimmy Page was there was because David was obsessed with Aleister Crowley, and so was he.” (p.213)

“In his music I liked the fact that he seemed happy with a state of unease.” (p.226)

“He was almost like a vampire looking for not blood but sex.” (p.240))