All Quotes

"I'd never heard anything like it before. It was like banshee music. This absolutely otherworldly voice, singing about a book, and as a bookish kid, I was always fascinated by anything, any music that seems to be about or inspired by books."

"One of the things I love about Kate Bush is her absolute ability to take things, to pluck things that you would never expect to see on a rock album, and put them there and make them work. James Joyce's Ulysses — one of the greatest passages in all of English or Anglo-Irish literature, is Molly Bloom's glorious soliloquy ending in a sequence of Yeses. It's about embracing the world of the senses, embracing yourself, embracing sex, embracing love, embracing the future, embracing all possibility, and it goes all the way back to me, to "Wuthering Heights" — this is somebody who is not afraid of books. This is somebody who is not afraid of reading, somebody who's not afraid of writers, and who's not afraid of translating, being an intermediary, being a door, between the world of books and the world of rock."

"Kate Bush makes a record, and you don't hear from her. And you play the stuff she has made, and one day you are surprised, and she brings out something else, and she's been quietly working away on it, for however long she wanted to work on it, and I love that. I love the willingness to be quiet, until its time to speak — which is something that she does over and over."

"Its funny no one ever applies the term "progressive rock" to Kate Bush, but to me its prog. It's the same think I love about the best prog, it's like, the really sort of brash stuff, people showing technical ability, I have no interest in, but the experimental dreamy stuff, that sort of came from many places at once, I set her stuff next to, well next to Janis, is the obvious comparison..."

"I had a listen, I was intrigued ... by this strange voice, and I went to her house, met her parents down in Kent, and she played me, it must have been forty or fifty songs, on tape, and I thought, I should try to do something. ... We were making — Pink Floyd was making the Wish You Were Here album, and I think we had the record company people down at Abbey Road, in number 3, and I said to them "Do you want to hear something I've got? And they said "sure", so we found another room, and I played it to them, "The Man with the Child in His Eyes", and they said "Yep, thank you – we'll have it.""

"It is absolutely beautiful, isn't it? And its a sort of over two years before any of the other recordings she did. That is her singing at the age of 16, and having written those extraordinary lyrics — about whatever they're about."

"This is a whole universe I can dive into — and for me, it was very avant-garde, and expressive and kind of from a complete different planet to everything else that you see from the eighties ... it's like she was definitely out their on her own. ... She seems to have an endless kind of ability to put herself in and with empathize with different characters and viewpoints."

"I really thank Kate, because these touchstones like "This Woman's Work", that kind of song, it's celebrating everything that's so wonderful about being a woman, and being nurturing, and intuitive and emotional, and gentle and sensual, and just like really intimate. People don't put their hearts on the line in that vulnerable way very much, and me, as an artist myself, it's helped me to not be frightened, to show all, as much of my vulnerability as a woman as possible, and in that be powerful."

"They're not "normal" songs. None of her songs have been "normal." She's just who she is, she's unique. She's — a mystery. She's the most beautiful mystery. ... Let me tell you a story: when I had my civil partnership, nine years ago, in 2005, and Kate — we invited Kate, we didn't think she'd come but she came, she came with her husband Danny, and there were a lot of very famous people in that room, there were like 600 people — and all anybody wanted to meet was Kate Bush. I mean, musician, anybody, they couldn't believe Kate Bush was there. She's kind of an enigma."

""Wuthering Heights" was not your normal type song — but that's why it was so brilliant. It was something out the norm. When something like that comes along, they don't come along that often. When does the next Kate Bush come along, after Kate Bush? There hasn't been one."

"That record she did with Peter Gabriel saved my life. That record helped me get sober. So she played a big part in my actual downfall and kind of "rebirth'" as it were. That record helped me so much. I never told her that, but it did."

"When I first heard it, I thought that's extremely challenging, the vocal — it was almost hysterical, and it was so up there, the register, but it was absolutely fascinating. And I know at the time a lot of my friends couldn't bear it, they thought it was just "too much" — but that's exactly what drew me in."

"My favorite album by her is The Dreaming, and I think she produced that one herself. That got a lot of criticism — but I loved it. It was overloaded with textures, and tones and all manner of things. It's a record that I still can play to this day, and still hear new things."

"I was teaching at the Dance Centre in Covent Garden. Kate turned up, dressed very properly in her ballet tights and things, and her hair straight back, looking very, very professional indeed, a very, very serious student. But as timid as hell, and of course she took a place at the back of the class, you know, I had to coax her forward. I mean she was extremely shy, extremely timid, and of course the first thing I had to do was, you know, bring her out of herself, give her courage. I have to say that once Kate actually started dancing, she was a wild thing, she was wild. … One day, some months after knowing her, I got back to my home … and there was this LP pushed under the door, The Kick Inside — and there, dedicated to me was this beautiful song "Moving" — I didn't know she had any aspirations of being a singer. She never talked about herself."

"I knew from day one, I knew ... there was no way this girl was not going to make it. She was going to be a huge success. There was no way, because she was so driven for it. And her enthusiasm for it all was infectious."

"The working relationship was never a problem, you know. We always worked together reasonably well, you know, we always argue, and we always have and always will. I've always argued with Kate, and she's always argued with me, but I guess that's just the way it is, you know, so I feel I'm emotionally involved with it all, to a great extent, you know, much more so than most people would imagine. Not only did we have a personal relationship, and I work with her — I really love her music, I really do... to the point, where I virtually work with nobody else — because nobody else comes close."

"I only like extreme talent. It's the only thing I can listen to. Where does Kate Bush come from? You can't hear her influences. It's like Billie Holiday, when I first heard Billie Holiday, I'd never heard anything like that in my life — the same with Kate Bush. I can't figure out musically, artistically, who her mother and father is."

"Let's not talk about Communism. Communism was just an idea, just pie in the sky."

"What have they done to our poor people?... [the] pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments... I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans."

"Eugenics was not inspired by Darwin's natural selection but by ancient agricultural ARTIFICIAL selection. Eugenics is UNnatural selection."

"University is about confronting new ideas, unfamiliar, un-"safe". If you want to be "safe" you are not worthy of a university education."

"I needed you To love me too. I wait for your move."

"All the love, all the love, All the love we should have given. All the love, all the love, All the love you could have given. All the love..."

"The tambourine jingle-jangles. The medium roams and rambles. Not taken in, I break the circle. I want this man To go away now."

"With a kiss I'd pass the key And feel your tongue Teasing and receiving. With your spit Still on my lip, You hit the water."

"Rosabel believe, Not even eternity Can hold Houdini! "Rosabel, believe!""

"I will not let you in. I face towards the wind. I change into the Mule."

"It doesn't hurt me. Do you want to feel how it feels? Do you want to know that it doesn't hurt me? Do you want to hear about the deal that I'm making? You, it's you and me."

"And if I only could, I'd make a deal with God, And I'd get him to swap our places, Be running up that road, Be running up that hill, Be running up that building."

"You don't want to hurt me, But see how deep the bullet lies. Unaware I'm tearing you asunder. Ooh, there is thunder in our hearts."

"Is there so much hate for the ones we love? Tell me, we both matter, don't we? You, it's you and me. It's you and me won't be unhappy."

"C'mon, baby, c'mon darling, Let me steal this moment from you now. C'mon, angel, c'mon, c'mon, darling, Let's exchange the experience, oh..."

"If I only could Be running up that hill With no problems..."

"It's in the trees! It's coming!"

"I found a fox Caught by dogs. He let me take him in my hands. His little heart, It beats so fast, And I'm ashamed of running away From nothing real — I just can't deal with this, But I'm still afraid to be there, Among your hounds of love..."

"Do you know what I really need? I need love love love love love, yeah!"

"They look down At the ground, Missing. But I never go in now. I'm looking at the Big Sky."

"You never really understood me. You never really tried."

"This cloud, this cloud — Says "Noah, C'mon and build me an Ark." And if you're coming, jump, 'Cause We're leaving with the Big Sky."

"She knows that I've been doing something wrong, But she won't say anything."

"Am I the cat that takes the bird? To her the hunted, not the hunter."

"Mother stands for comfort. Mother will hide the murderer. Mother hides the madman. Mother will stay mum."

"I still dream of Orgonon. I wake up crying. You're making rain, And you're just in reach, When you and sleep escape me."

"I just know that something good is going to happen. I don't know when, But just saying it could even make it happen."

"On top of the world, Looking over the edge, You could see them coming. You looked too small In their big, black car, To be a threat to the men in power."

"I hid my yo-yo In the garden. I can't hide you From the government. Oh, God, Daddy — I won't forget..."

"Little light shining, Little light will guide them to me. My face is all lit up, My face is all lit up."

"If they find me racing white horses, They'll not take me for a buoy. Let me be weak, Let me sleep And dream of sheep."

"Ooh, their breath is warm And they smell like sleep, And they say they take me home. Like poppies heavy with seed They take me deeper and deeper."

"There's something moving Under, under the ice, Moving under ice, Through water, Trying to get out of the cold water. "It's me." Something, someone — help them. "It's me.""