Lou Reed Quotations | Page 2

I don't like nostalgia unless it's mine.

Raymond Chandler managed to write about L.A. his whole career. Should I keep going writing about New York? Is that what I should be doing? Songwriting doesn't work that way.

Well all tai chi has the martial aspect to it, a lot of people don't know, a lot of the teachers won't show it, or they do show it but you don't really learn it, what the application is.

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.

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.

I would like to live to a ripe old age and raise watermelons in Wyoming.

You know, some people got no choice, and they can never find a voice, to talk with that they can even call their own. So the first thing that they see, that allows them the right to be, why they follow it, you know, it’s called bad luck..

The most important thing is work.

Over what guilty spirit to not hear the beating, to not hear the beating, but only tears of perfect moan, only tears of perfect moan.

The baby sits in front of MTV watching violent fantasies, while Dad guzzles beer with his favorite sport only to find his heroes all coked up.

I shot a vein in my neck and coughed up a quaalude.

Valium would have helped that bash.

What I really love is my scotch. It's the power, the power of positive drinking.

Herpes, AIDS, the Middle East at full throttle. Better check that sausage before you put it in the waffle.

Why don't you swallow razor blades?

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

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.

Kill them now, cause I need some kicks. I need some kicks, I'm getting bored.

The currents rage so deep upon us, this is the age of video violence.

I don't like overdubs, never liked them.

As the dead rise to live, the live sink to die, the currents are deep and raging inside.

Please don't set me free Death means a lot me

I love women, I think they're great.

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.

I'd harbored hopes that the intelligence that once inhabited novels or films would ingest rock. I was, perhaps, wrong.

How could you even dream or think something of someone who is as uncommercial as I am?

It's just a temporary thing.

I'm still not sure I didn't die

Let's do what you fear most That from which you recoil But which still makes your eyes moist

I wanna hear some Diana Ross, I wanna hear some Marvin Gaye. I wanna hear a song that reminds me of a better day.

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.

You do what you love, or you get arrested.

You know, when you're relaxed, you're putting it out there, and then it comes, oh, I can do that.

But it's the things that preceded it that made that happen, and of course now someone like me thinks, well, if I can do that... then there are a lot of other things that are possible.

Don't the people you're around shape the music, is that what you're saying? Everything does.

There are problems in these times, but none of them are mineI'm beginning to see the light

An eye for an eye is elemental.

I had started also studying because I wanted to learn more about power and fighting.

And I feel just like Jesus' son

I mean, there are peripheral things I do, I do photography, I write plays, I have books published, but that's neither here not there.

I try very much, whenever I do projects, whatever it is, there's only one thing on my mind, only one thing.

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.

Moving on has allowed me to know who I am and to be present in all that I do. I take this forward in my work and in my personal relationships. It is a powerful program and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to move on with their life.

But I found tai chi when I was studying with Leung Shum, who teaches Eagle Claw and Wu Hao.

People can vote for who ever they want. That doesn't mean I have to go near them.

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

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

Honey, I'm a cocksucker, what are you?

I wish I had a talking book that told me how to act and look, a talking book that contained keys to past and present memories

I'm not leaving New York. And neither is anyone else. We're here. We are quintessential Americans - we're not only American, but New York-American.

But it's not only: What are you going to do about touring, it's: What are you going to do with your life? Is there a point to what we do? I think there is. Making music, creating beautiful things. We have to be in love with the good and the beautiful. If we are not, then you're in a nihilistic state.

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.

Electricity comes from other planets.

To wish for the crazy times one last time and freeze it in the memory of a camera is the least a great artist can do.

Looking through the viewfinder for me is like being in a movie theater. That's what I like about it.

Bodily changes take place, like the thing with the kick.

Families that live out in the suburbs often make each other cry.

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

The only thing constantly changing is change, and change is always changing for the worse.

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.

Writhe and sway to music's pain searing with asides, caress death with a lover's touch for it shall be your bride.

This violent rage that turned inward cannot be helped by drink.

All the people have gone to war leaving no interrogator to mind.

Jealousy endlessly eats through my mind, and jealously endlessly makes me be unkind.

What could there be more purely bright in truth's day star?

Eve kissed Able, that's how he got murdered by Cain.

There were lots of things that I recognized from my experience with Eagle Claw and Wu Hao, and here was the combination of the whole kit and kaboodle, the whole tamale in one.

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

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

Here comes Jesse Jackson, he talks of common ground. Does that common ground include me, or is it just a sound?

The injuries we do in kind are visited upon us often. In the science of the mind, trying hard to move a shadow.

I've made love to my mother, killed my father, and my brother. What am I to do?

The rich son waits for his father to die, the poor just drink and cry.

I've found that from my point of view, the Chen style contained many things that I knew on a fairly superficial level from Eagle Claw, and that had Chen elements of what seemed to me the soft in Eagle Claw.

If someone teaches you alignment and - I'm not a tai chi expert by any stretch - so interviewing me about tai chi is kind of the cart before the horse - but just from my point of view as a student, it's simply that Master Ren can show you the relationship of power, stance and form.

The sickness of the mother runs on through the girl, leaving her small and helpless. Liquor flies through her brain with the force of a gun, leaving her running in circles.

When he beat my mother it made me so mad.

My attitude is that you very rarely come in contact with someone of Master Ren's level, so every opportunity I could get to learn from him I wanted to do that.

And no kinds of love are better than others

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.

Any human being should have a tolerance for anybody.

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.

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.'

You're going to reap just what you sow

I've always believed that there's an amazing number of things you can do through a rock'n'roll song and that you can do serious writing in a rock song if you can somehow do it without losing the beat,

First thing you learnis that you'vealways got to wait

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.

Between thought and expression lies a lifetime.

They tied his arms behind his back to teach him how to swim, they put blood in his coffee and milk in his gin.

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.

You can't always trust your mother.

Nothing beats 2 guitars, drum and bass.

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 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.

It's interesting to have a conglomeration of people that covers the strata from A to Z... There's a certain element of the audience that's intellectually oriented, into the lyrics... then there's another element of the audience that's into a sex trip. I'm into both of them.

My God is rock'n'roll.

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 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.

I can concentrate on my art.