Top 205 Quotes & Sayings by Lou Reed - Page 2

Some even claim that I'm a terror, a dictator and they're right.

I have no control over the audience. I have no idea what they think. My heart's pure. I can't do anything. I really can't do anything. I don't know what goes on in the crowd.

I don't believe in dressing up reality. I don't believe in using makeup to make things look smoother.

I wanted to be an actor. That was my real goal. But I wasn't any good at it, so I wrote my own material and acted through that. That's my idea of fun. I get to be all these things in the songs.

When I record an album I'm trying to get as close as possible to that perfect moment.

I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all. Sometimes it's me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it's not me at all.

The first generation of CDs sounded terrible. Any chance to remaster would make the music sound better than what was already out there.

I don't think I'm in any position to call myself a martial artist. I'm a student of the martial arts.

It's depressing when you're still around and your albums are out of print.

I can't do anything I want to. I mean, I can't have my own TV show. I can't have my own movie. But within my little world, nobody tells me what to put on the albums.

Research, research, research. It means everything.

Some people drink to unleash their libidos, and other people drink to prop up their egos.

My week beats your year.

I like druggy downtown kids who spray paint walls and trains. I like their lack of training, their primitive technique. I think it hurts you, when you stay too long in school.

They put the thing down your throat so you don't swallow your tongue, and they put electrodes on your head. That's what was recommended in Rockland State Hospital to discourage homosexual feelings. The effect is that you lose your memory and become a vegetable. You can't read a book because you get to page 17 and have to go right back to page one again.

When the past makes you laugh and you can savor the magic that lets you survive your own war, you'll find that that fire is passion and there's a door up ahead - not a wall.

I am bigger and stronger than ever. My Chen Taiji and health regimen has served me well all of these years, thanks to Master Ren Guang-yi. I look forward to being on stage performing, and writing more songs to connect with your hearts and spirits and the universe well into the future.

Things always seem to end before they start

You won't see my parents honored on any stamps.

When you're growing up in a small town You know you'll grow down in a small town There is only one good use for a small town You hate it and you know you'll have to leave.

It's fun to be in a small club and to be able to look somebody right in the eye and watch them just freak. Then it's fun to be in front of thousands of people and watch a couple of hundred freaking out of their minds.

You do this because you like it, you think what you're making is beautiful. And if you think it's beautiful, maybe they think it's beautiful.

I'm tearing down Route 80 East, the sun's on my right side. I'm drunk, but my vision's good.

I don't think anybody is anybody else's moral compass.

High energy does not necessarily mean fast, high energy has to do with heart.

I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all.

The president's dead, no one can find his head, its been missing for two weeks. But no one seemed to notice it.

I take drugs just because in the 20th century in a technological age living in the city there are certain drugs you have to take just to keep yourself normal like a caveman. Just to bring yourself up or down, but to attain equilibrium you need to take certain drugs. They don't getcha high even, they just getcha normal.

I'd breed a little liberal army in the wood, just like these redneck lunatics I see at the local bar with their tribe of mutant inbred piglets.

Any human being should have a tolerance for anybody.

Between thought and expression lies a lifetime.

You know the expression 'God protects fools and drunks'? I qualify for both.

Life's like a mayonnaise soda.

When I saw that combination of grace and power, the fast and the soft, the yin and the yang, that's what I'd been looking for.

First thing you learnis that you'vealways got to wait

I think it's important that people don't feel alone.

It always bothers me to see people writing RIP when a person dies. It just feels so insincere and like a cop out. To me, RIP is the microwave dinner of posthumous honours.

I like mindless disco... they say the lyrics are stupid and repetitious. So what's wrong with that? So is lying in the sun. Not everything has to be serious.

Does anyone need yet another politician caught with his pants down and money sticking in his hole?

Will none of the powers that be realize what Brian Wilson did with the chords. Deftly taking from all sources, old rock, Four Freshman, he got in his records a beautiful hybrid sound - Let Him Run Wild, Don't Worry Baby, I Get Around, Fun, Fun, Fun - 'and she had fun, fun, fun 'till her daddy took her T-bird away.'

And no kinds of love are better than others

All I want to do, is write rock and roll that you could listen to as you got older, and it wouldn't lose anything; it would be timeless, in the subject matter and the literacy of the lyrics.

Nothing beats 2 guitars, drum and bass.

I want the principles of a timeless muse, I want to eradicate my negative views.

Well, everybody does something, some people race cars, others collect stamps, I find tai chi to be philosophically, aesthetically, physically and spiritually fascinating.

It's the music that kept us all intact, kept us from going crazy.

When you pass through the fire, you pass through humble.

Not too many songwriters, when they write songs go for broke. When someone does who's really good, it's astonishing. There's a reason a three-minute song can devastate you, or make you get up and dance, stop what you're doing and go, 'What is that?' It just hits you. And it's a very potent thing you're playing around with.

When you think the night has seen your mind, That inside your twisted and unkind, Let me stand to show that you are blind. Please put down you hands cause I see you. I'll be you mirror.

You can't ask me to explain the lyrics because I won't do it...I always believed that I have something important to say and I said it. That's why I survived because I still believe I've got something to say. ... I don't like overdubs, never liked them. ... The music business doesn't interest me anymore...Don't the people you're around shape the music, is that what you're saying? Everything does. ... I'm not joking around when I've said occasionally, trying to learn how to play a D chord properly has been a very big thing for me.

With Master Ren, if I'd tell him I can't do that and he'd say, yes you can, and it turns out I very much can do it.

Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, that's what the Statue of Bigotry says. Your poor huddled masses, let's just club them to death, and get it over with.

I write whatever shows up. That's good enough for me. I'm part of the first generation that wants to still do original material and not tour around as an oldies act.

Sometimes, you've got to be in a place. You're just another guy. You can just blend in. I live out in the wilds of nowhere, out in Jersey. Even there, there's sometimes problems. College students like journey out there and show up at 11 o'clock at night, on my porch, looking into the door not saying anything. My wife and I are sitting there; it's really creepy.

You can't always trust your mother.

Rock & roll is so great, people should start dying for it. You don't understand. The music gave you back your beat so you could dream...The people just have to die for the music. People are dying for everything else, so why not for music? Die for it. Isn't it pretty? Wouldn't you die for something pretty?

You've gotta blow the roof off of your heart and let the universe in.

You do what you love, or you get arrested.

My God is rock'n'roll. It's an obscure power that can change your life. The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.

Speaking in a common tongue, speaking through guitars and drums.