Lou Reed Quotes

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

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.

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

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

The only thing constantly changing is change
The living only become dead
Your hair falling out
Your liver swelled up
Your teeth rot your gums and your chin
Your ass starts to sag
Your balls shrivel up
Your cock swallowed up in its sack
The only thing constantly changing is change
And it's always change on your back.

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

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

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?

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

Any human being should have a tolerance for anybody.

But I'm also talented and I know when I created something great and Perfect Night is something great, no doubt, no but.

Dear Pope, send me some hope or a rope.

Perfect Night is minimalistic and that's what makes it so forceful.

I think life is far too short to concentrate on your past. I rather look into the future.

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

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

I don't think anybody is anybody else's moral compass. Maybe listening to my music is not the best idea if you live a very constricted life. Or maybe it is.

I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are
In case you don't know
I'll be the sun
The wind and the rain
The light on your door
To show that you're home.
When you think the nights as in your mind
Bent inside, you're twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands, cause I see you.
I find it hard
To believe you don't know
The beauty you are
But if you don't
Let me be your eyes
A hand to your darkness
So you won't be afraid.
When you think the nights as in your mind
Bent inside, you're twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands, cause I see you.
I'll be your mirror

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

Research, research, research. It means everything.

Life's like a mayonnaise soda.

Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony.

Some people are like human tuinals

I've become completely well adjusted to being a cult figure.

They listen to the music of idiots and amuse themselves with the sordid miseries of their businesses. They are not the things of angels or of any higher outpost that humanity might aspire to. Your loathsome vomitous businessman king is of the lowest order, his advisors crumbling mockeries of education driven by avarice. My love, dress them in the suits of mockery, and in their advanced state of stupidity and senility, burn and destroy them, so their ashes might join the compost which they so much deserve.

To debate political objectives, views, and goals is the most American thing conceivable.

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.

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

An eye for an eye is elemental.

First thing you learnis that you'vealways got to wait

Why don't you swallow razor blades?

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.

She's my best friend, better than a dog or car.

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

I can't tell the difference between wrong and right, are you laughing at me?

I don't like the word rock opera, but I'm trying to write on that level that's reserved for plays still, or novels.

I love women, I think they're great.

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

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.

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 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..

I'm in this business for too long to be halfhearted about anything.

I always thought martial arts was the most modern choreography we could have right now, and I always wanted to put it to music.

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

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

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.

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.

In the late '70s I started to search for the perfect sound - whatever that might be, before that I was mainly interested in drugs, insanity and the rock'n'roll lifestyle.

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

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

How can anybody learn anything from an artwork when the piece of art only reflects the vanity of the artist and not reality?

I dreamed that I was young and smart, and it was not a waste. I dreamed that there was a point of life, and to the human race.

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.

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

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.

People think that I work out but it's all t'ai chi.

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.

One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz.

It takes a busload of faith to get by.

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

I never liked the Beatles. I thought they were garbage.

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

It's just a temporary thing.

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

Sound is more than just noise. Ordered sound is music. My life is music.

The gay people know where I'm at. Straight people may not know where I'm at, but they find it kind of interesting when they show up and see what is sitting around them.

I'm waiting'/for my man/ got twenty-six dollars in my hand/ he's never early/he's always late/ the first thing you learn/ is you always gotta' wait'
-Waiting for the Man

Teach them about anger, the sin that comes with dawning. Teach them about flowers, and the beauty of forgiveness.

I've gone out with my shotgun. This is hunting country out there. You better run.

The music is all. People should die for it. People are dying for everything else, so why not the music?

I always believed that I have something important to say and I said it.

The heart says what only the heart knows.

When I was in college, I had a jazz radio show. I called it 'Excursion on a Wobbly Rail,' after a Cecil Taylor song. I used to run around the Village following Ornette Coleman wherever he played.

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

I don't like overdubs, never liked them.

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

The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.

They say no one person can do it all
But you want to in your head
But you can't be Shakespeare and you can't be Joyce
So what is left instead

You're stuck with yourself and a rage that can hurt you
You have to start at the beginning again
And just this moment
This wonderful fire started up again

When you pass through humble, when you pass through sickly
When you pass through, I'm better than you all
When you pass through anger and self deprecation
And have the strength to acknowledge it all

When the past makes you laugh and you can savor the magic
That let you survive your own war
You find that that fire is passion
And there's a door up ahead, not a wall

- "Magic And Loss" The Summation

I love Ornette Coleman. I love Don Cherry. I love the way those guys play.

Psychologically, it's better that I think that I'm dirt.

Senator, it has been reported that you have had illegal congress with your mother.

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

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

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.

I am very emotionally affected by sound. Sounds are the inexplicable ... There is a sound you hear in your head, it's your nerves, or your blood running.

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

Music is an amazing thing. I don't know if we really think about it the same way we consider a painting an amazing thing. I mean, a painting is, in quotes, imaginary. There is nothing on the canvas when you start; and writing a song, there is nothing there when you start.

I'll tell ya, I'm a genuinely nice guy. I really am. A real nice guy. But I think I'm temperamental.

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.

You can't beat 2 guitars, bass, and drums.

Here's to Mulberry Jane
She made jam when she came
Somebody cut off her feet
Now jelly rolls in the street.

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

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 do what you love, or you get arrested.

Electricity comes from other planets.

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

Music should come crashing out of your speakers and grab you, and the lyrics should challenge whatever preconceived notions that listener has.

Between thought and expression lies a lifetime.

She never ever lost her head even when she was giving head.

The music business doesn't interest me anymore.