Lou Reed Music Plastic Quotes

The old sound was alcoholic. The tradition was finally broken. The music is sex and drugs and happy. And happy is the joke the music understands best. Ultra sonic sounds on records to cause frontal lobotomies. Hey, don't be afraid. You'd better take drugs and learn to love PLASTIC. All diffrent kinds of plastic- pliable, rigid, colored, colorful, nonattached plastic. - Lou Reed (1965-1968) ~ Legs McNeil

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

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

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? ~ Lou Reed

Partying means drinking. It also means playing records by Lou Reed and Chicago, which I thought was a city but is also a band it turns out. ~ Ron Currie Jr.

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. ~ Lou Reed

I have been tied up with music for about as long as I can remember. By the time I was four I was picking out little tunes my mother played on the reed organ in the living-room. ~ Mary Lou Williams

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. ~ Lou Reed

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. ~ Lou Reed

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

The music business doesn't interest me anymore. ~ Lou Reed

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

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. ~ Lou Reed

Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony. ~ Lou Reed

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

The heart says what only the heart knows. ~ Lou Reed

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. ~ Lou Reed

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 ~ Lou Reed

I don't know just where I'm going
But I'm goin' to try for the kingdom if I can
'Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man
When I put a spike into my vein
Then I tell you things aren't quite the same

When I'm rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus' son
And I guess I just don't know
And I guess that I just don't know

I have made very big decision
I'm goin' to try to nullify my life
'Cause when the blood begins to flow
When it shoots up the dropper's neck
When I'm closing in on death

You can't help me not you guys
All you sweet girls with all your sweet talk
You can all go take a walk
And I guess I just don't know
And I guess I just don't know

I wish that I was born a thousand years ago
I wish that I'd sailed the darkened seas
On a great big clipper ship
Going from this land here to that
I put on a sailor's suit and cap

Away from the big city
Where a man cannot be free
Of all the evils in this town
And of himself and those around
Oh, and I guess I just don't know
Oh, and I guess I just don't know

Heroin, be the death of me
Heroin, it's my wife and it's my life
Because a mainer to my vein
Leads to a center in my head
And then I'm better off than dead

When the smack begins to flow
Then I really don't care anymore
About all the Jim-Jims in this town
A ~ Lou Reed

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons,
and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.

But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.

You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

And what is it to wor ~ Kahlil Gibran

My week beats your year. ~ Lou Reed

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. ~ Lou Reed

You're a musician: You play. That's what you do. ~ Lou Reed

If anyone ever had a heart
He wouldn't turn around and break it
If anyone ever played a part
he wouldn't turn around and hate it. ~ Lou Reed

There's music in the sighing of a reed;
There's music in the gushing of a rill;
There's music in all things, if men had ears;
The earth is but the music of the spheres. ~ George Gordon Byron

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

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

We could say that people who eat grits, listen to country music, follow stock-car racing, support corporal punishment in the schools, hunt 'possum, go to Baptist churches and prefer bourbon to Scotch are likely to be Southerners. ~ John Shelton Reed

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 ~ Lou Reed

I will deck thee with trophies, garlands of my defeat. It is never in my power to escape unconquered.
I surely know my pride will go to the wall, my life will burst its bonds in exceeding pain, and my empty heart will sob out in music like a hollow reed, and the stone will melt in tears.
I surely know the hundred petals of a lotus will not remain closed for ever and the secret recess of its honey will be bared.
From the blue sky an eye shall gaze upon me and summon me in silence. Nothing will be left for me, nothing whatever, and utter death shall I receive at thy feet. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

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

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. ~ Lou Reed

Electricity comes from other planets. ~ Lou Reed

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

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

Pablo Picasso, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway, Mel Gibson, Lou Reed, Norman Mailer, Vanessa Redgrave, Van Morrison - each is distinguished by controversies unrelated to his or her art; by many accounts, some of them are not nice people at all. ~ Steve Erickson

I don't like nostalgia unless it's mine. ~ Lou Reed

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

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

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

I can create a vibe without saying anything, just by being in the room. ~ Lou Reed

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

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. ~ Lou Reed

I remember the ecstasy of first going to a nightclub wearing eyeliner. Drenched in hairspray and glitter, dancing to Lou Reed records. I felt as if I was living on the outside, in a realm that most people could never enter. For so long I had felt completely alone, but makeup made my isolation feel special. The world came to life – the streets were no longer grey and cold, they sparkled with sordid possibility. But the most resonant pleasures in our lives are always individually defined. When you expect the world to appreciate them they simply expose their own bland uniformity. I learnt that the more unusual you are, the more personalised pleasures the world reveals to you. ~ Guy Mankowski

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

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