Laurie Anderson Quotes

Technology today is the campfire around which we tell our stories. There's this attraction to light and to this kind of power, which is both warm and destructive. We're especially drawn to the power. Many of the images of technology are about making us more powerful, extending what we can do. Unfortunately, 95 percent of this is hype, because I think we're powerful without it.

I'm thrilled by the fact that I made something out of nothing. There it is! It wasn't there before: there it is - I made it! That's pretty powerful, and that's the power that Buddhists give to every single person.

I'm a real workaholic.

Some friends of mine work in an office. They were getting really nervous from their coffee breaks, so they started to have wig breaks. They tried on wigs for 15 minutes. They found this relaxing. So that's Wig Therapy.

I'm an average enough person to point to the things I've gotten to see that are awe-inspiring.

The thing that's characteristic of my performance is that I literally do drag the whole studio onto the stage.

And there was a beautiful view,
But nobody could see.
'Cause everyone in the Island was saiyng,
Look at me! Look at me!

The problem with prototypes is they don't always work.

You can do bigger and bigger things. For what?

I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.

Something that has so much power must have life. Instruments have life.

I think illusion is one of the most interesting things that I've found to think about. Just look at yesterday, and what you were doing, and how important it was, and how nonexistent it is now! How dreamlike it is! Same thing with tomorrow. So where are we living?

Computers are so deeply stupid. What bother me most when they talk about technology is they don't realize how much more exciting their minds are. That machine is stupid. And boring. It does just a few things and then it'll crash. People think, 'I am on the Net, I am in touch with the world'. Wrong! The point is how we work, not how machines work.

Gut level is a good level to deal with life, and for me, I have to say that Buddhism makes sense for me because it's how I'm an artist.

History is an angel being blown backwards into the future

The audience creates its own personality, I've noticed, in the first five minutes. They will either be generous, funny, silly, withholding, academic, analytical, grudging. And I'm fascinated with how that gets constructed, because it happens right away.

Books are the way the dead talk to the living.

I so much appreciate it when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist - I'm happy to see the work.

The right to carry a gun has nothing to do with the rights of other people.

I'm not usually where I think I am. It's kind of spooky.

Audiences, whether they're seeing a film or a reading or whatever it is, a concert, they decide very quickly what kind of show it is, and then they judge it. They judge the rest of the thing by whether it conforms to their rules for what a good symphony orchestra would be.

That's really a very different experience: You don't have to look to be understood. You're already understood.

People are really suffering these days. There's a lot of corporate triumph and a lot of personal despair as they wonder what are they working for.

It's just such a great miracle when things do work, and they work for such a wild variety of crazy reasons.

I am a New Yorker, one; I'm an artist, two; I'm a woman, three.

As an artist I'd choose the thing that's beautiful more than the one that's true.

I think a lot of people in Washington are extremely suspicious of NASA.

I always wonder when people have any kind of spiritual and meditative practice especially if it's one designed in part to help them cope with things that seem unmanageable and to cope with something like death, if they're able to maintain that practice and maintain the equanimity at the time of death whether it's, you know, that person's or that person's loved one.

If I'm confused, I just spend some time looking at the sky and falling into it. It's not a meditation that anyone taught me, it's something I've done my whole life, and liked doing, and it made me feel like nothing.

Well it was one of those days
Larger than life
When your friends came to dinner
And they stayed the night
And then they cleaned out the refrigerator
And ate everything in sight
And then they stayed up in the livingroom
And cried all night
Strange angels
Singing just for me
Old stories
Haunting me
This is nothing
Like I thought it would be ...

I don't care about being famous or having a lot of people go, "She's really good."

I just sort of wish people would dance differently. It reminds me of teenage sex.

My job is to make images and leave the decision-making and conclusion-drawing to other people.

My secret dream is to write an epic poem. That's probably the most pretentious thing I've said.

I always feel like if someone has stage fright, I really try and say, "Listen, these people want you to succeed, they want to have a good evening. They want to see something really great. They don't want to see something crappy. They don't. They want to be at something really special."

A lot of words in English confuse the idea of life and electricity, like the word livewire.

Not many people care what you do. They care about what you do as much as you care about what they do. Think about it. Just exactly that much. You are not the center of the universe.

I've never really had a hobby, unless you count art, which the IRS once told me I had to declare as a hobby since I hadn't made money with it.

You can do great things with low-tech stuff.

When you meet a man who is broken, pick him up and carry him. When you meet a woman who's broken, put her all into your arms. Cause we don't know where we come from ... we don't know where we are.

People only stutter at the beginning of the word. They're not afraid when they get to the end of the word. There's just regret.

And there was a beutiful view
But nobody could see
Cause everybody on the island
Was saying Look at me! Look at me.

No single person who has ever lived will be able to tell you what happens. Period. Nobody's right and nobody's wrong.

I don't take compliments so well. I always hang my head and shuffle and kind of try to immediately forget.

Your eyes. It's a day's worth of work to look into them.

I think women are excellent social critics.

I see and write things first as an artist, second as a woman, and third as a New Yorker. All three have built-in perspectives that aren't neutral.

I've been trying to avoid goal-oriented behavior.

Shining in the midnight moonlight, while the King sings love me tender.

I'm one of the first Americans who wasn't a torturer or an interrogator.

It's the tradition of American writers getting away in order to see the country - to get a better view.

One of the things I learned from working on the Olympics was, the world does not need another big multimedia show.

Art is about paying attention.

The world is a strange and wonderful place.

What happens when you're in a crash is you join a crash club, and you talk endlessly about your crash because you don't want to bore your friends with it. And they've heard about the crash so many times.

I really like books that you can kind of hear as much as think about, that are so graphic and visual.

Don't be afraid of anyone. Imagine your life if you're not afraid of anyone.

The expert is someone who carries malpractice insurance.

Every book is an alchemical creation, and I'm thinking back to 1857 when Herman Melville arrived in Greece and saw the Parthenon for the first time sitting there like a great beached whale, its big white bones exposed to the winds. But how can this happen? How can a whale turn into a building? Or into a book? In what way can words be alive?

I wanted to stay hooked because it was the first time I've been part of the tradition where forgetting was just fine. You do it, you try, you forget, you fail.

Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something.

I really trust audiences as having excellent taste, for the most part.

I know a lot of people who have weird specialties that are not taught in schools; they're things that you learn in life.

At the School of Visual Arts in New York, you can get your degree in Net art, which is really a fantastic way of thinking of theater in new ways.

I have written a lot about snakes. There's something pretty primordial about it.

I wanted to impress people because I was kind of a kid who was lost in the crowd - was sort of my, feeling about childhood was being part of a big family.

If there are bases on the moon, that would be the end of the moon as we know it.

You know, I can see two tiny pictures of myself And there's one in each of your eyes. And they're doin' everything I do. Every time I light a cigarette, they light up theirs. I take a drink and I look in and they're drinkin' too. It's drivin' me crazy. It's drivin' me nuts.

I fell in love with the idea that the mysterious thing you look for your whole life will eventually eat you alive. (Explaining her attraction to Moby-Dick)

I didn't really understand that Vipassana is a relatively new form of Buddhism that was based on the storage of pain. So the idea is that every time you don't scream, that's your Buddhist side.

Life goes by so fast. It's really - and a lot of times things happen so fast you don't know - how should I react.

The best thing about the term 'performance artist' is that it includes just about everything you might want to do.

As a New Yorker, I'm someone who lives on an island and looks across to America.

Ninety percent of the people in the world end up with the wrong person. And that's what makes the jukebox spin.

You can dance.
You can make me laugh.
You've got x-ray eyes.

You know how to sing.
You're a diplomat.
You've got it all.
Everybody loves you.

You can charm the birds out of the sky, But I, I've got
one thing.

You always know just what to say
And when to go,
But I've got one thing.

You can see in the dark,
But I've got one thing:
I loved you better.

Last night I woke up,
Saw this angel.
He flew in my window.
And he said,
Girl, pretty proud of yourself, huh?" And I looked around and said,
Who me?"
And he said, "The higher you fly, the faster you fall."

He said, "Send it up.
Watch it rise.
See it fall,
Gravity's rainbow.
Send it up.
Watch it rise.
See it fall,
Gravity's Angel.

My parents didn't raise me to be religious. The closest we come to worship is the Trinity of Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.

All of nature talks to me - if I could just figure out what it's saying - trees are swinging in the breeze. They're talking to me. Insects are rubbing their legs together. They're all talking. They're talking to me.

I have written a few children's books. The first book that I wrote was for children. It was called 'The Package', and it was a mystery story in pictures. It had no words.

I realized why movie scores are mostly strings, because it really frees your eyes to look around.

I kind of didn't believe the doctors when they came over and they said you're not going to be able to walk again. I'm sorry to tell you this. I thought who is this guy? I just was so impatient with the whole thing. I knew I was going to walk again. I knew that I was going to do that.

You need to try to master the ability to feel sad without actually being sad.

Being an artist is a totally godlike thing to do - and I have a god complex.