Velvet Underground Quotes

As a New Yorker you can't help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted 'Rhapsody in Blue' here; the Velvet Underground are from New York. ~ Moby

As a teen, I heard the second Velvet Underground album, 'White Light/White Heat,' and it was too much for my limited scope of appreciation. It was intense, but I didn't get it. ~ Henry Rollins

These are really terribly rough times, and we really should try to be as nice to each other as possible. ~ Lou Reed

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

Not many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band. ~ Brian Eno

I like their darkness but I also like the pop-side of the Velvet Underground. ~ Martin Gore

I think Andy Kaufman is to comedy what the Velvet Underground was to music - it's like, 80 thousand records sold, but everybody who bought one started a band. ~ Courtney Love

I think that everything happens for a reason, everything happens when it's going to happen. ~ Lou Reed

Though gay lifestyles have certainly moved into the open, there's little evidence that society has become more open in its basic attitudes or that entertainers should feel cozy in emerging from the velvet underground. ~ Peter Bart

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

One of the greatest learning experiences I had was hanging out with Maureen Tucker from the Velvet Underground. There's a woman who has no training and has a very simplistic and very tribal drumming style. I don't even know that she can even do a drum roll, but she's probably my favorite rock drummer because she plays every note perfect. ~ Glenn Kotche

It's hard to imagine the whole punk movement without The Velvet Underground. I toured with them when they did their reunion tour, and no one sounds like that; they are a very unique-sounding band. ~ Dean Wareham

The clothes I wear ... that doesn't change. I love long dresses. I love velvet. I love high boots. I never change. I love the same eye make-up. I'm not a fad person. I still have everything I had then. That's one part of me ... that's where my songs come from. There's a song on the new Fleetwood Mac album [Mirage] that says, 'Going back to the velvet underground/back to the floor that I love,' because I always put my bed on the floor. 'To a room with some lace and paper flowers/ back to the gypsy that I was.' ~ Stevie Nicks

No part of Manhattan these days really has the same vibe I get from a Ramones song or a Velvet Underground song. ~ Ezra Koenig

I'm Set Free"

I've been set free and I've been bound
To the memories of yesterday's clouds
I've been set free and I've been bound

And now I'm set free
I'm set free
I'm set free to find a new illusion

I've been blinded but
You I can see
What in the world has happened to me
The prince of stories who walk right by me

And now I'm set free
I'm set free
I'm set free to find a new illusion

I've been set free and I've been bound
Let me tell you people
What I found
I saw my head laughing
Rolling on the ground

And now I'm set free
I'm set free
I'm set free to find a new illusion ~ The Velvet Underground

Parallels between classical and pop are not new. The whole San Francisco movement of John Cage and Terry Riley went hand in glove with what the Velvet Underground were doing. ~ Charles Hazlewood

The Plastic People of the Universe played 'Venus in Furs' from Velvet Underground, and I knew everything was basically okay. ~ Tom Stoppard

When I was very little, I was into Michael Jackson. At six or seven, it was Madonna, but she's not what she used to be. I've been into everything from Edith Piaf to Joe Strummer to the Velvet Underground to Suicide to A Tribe Called Quest to African music. ~ Lykke Li

Sometimes they ask if you want to hook up your iPod for background music. Do not do this. It's a trap. They'll put it on shuffle, and no matter how much Beastie Boys or Velvet Underground you have on there, the following four tracks will play in a row; "We'd Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover" from Annie, "Hold On" by Wilson Phillips, "That's What Friends Are For, Various Artists, and "We'd Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover" from Annie. ~ Tina Fey

With the indie kids you have to remember this: they really think that what they do matters in some way. They reckon that history will care. (They don't know that history will have other shit to be getting on with.) The indie kids figure that they're passing on the torch or some fucking thing. That, just as they were influenced by someone - the Velvet Underground, Jonathan Richman, the Stooges, whoever - then, in the future, young bands will be influenced by them. Maybe so. Maybe a few thousand malnourished cockless freaks scattered around the globe will give a shit. So what? Real people don't.. ~ John Niven

Everybody gets a tag. If you listen to a Velvet Underground record, you don't think, 'Godfathers of Punk.' You just think, 'This sounds great.' The tags are there in order to help try to sell something by giving it a name that's going to stick in somebody's memory. But it doesn't describe it. So 'depressing' isn't a word I would use to describe my music. But there is some sadness in it
there has to be, so that the happiness in it will matter. ~ Elliott Smith

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles. ~ Rivers Cuomo

I want to be able to listen to recording of piano sonatas and know who's playing. I want to go to classical concerts and know when you're meant to clap. I want to be able to 'get' modern jazz without it all sounding like this terrible mistake, and I want to know who the Velvet Underground are exactly. I want to be fully engaged in the World of Ideas, I want to understand complex economics, and what people see in Bob Dylan. I want to possess radical but humane and well-informed political ideals, and I want to hold passionate but reasoned debates round wooden kitchen tables, saying things like 'define your terms!' and 'your premise is patently specious!' and then suddenly to discover that the sun's come up and we've been talking all night. I want to use words like 'eponymous' and 'solipsistic' and 'utilitarian' with confidence. I want to learn to appreciate fine wines, and exotic liquers, and fine single malts, and learn how to drink them without turning into a complete div, and to eat strange and exotic foods, plovers' eggs and lobster thermidor, things that sound barely edible, or that I can't pronounce...Most of all I want to read books; books thick as brick, leather-bound books with incredibly thin paper and those purple ribbons to mark where you left off; cheap, dusty, second-hand books of collected verse, incredibly expensive, imported books of incomprehensible essays from foregin universities.

At some point I'd like to have an original idea...And all of these ~ David Nicholls

I like Velvet Underground, but I was never really hardcore into them. I like them, and I like Nico, but I won't front like I'm super knowledgeable. I just never got around to it. ~ Eric Andre

I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk. ~ Dean Wareham

A Corymbus for Autumn
How are the veins of thee, Autumn, laden?
Umbered juices,
And pulpèd oozes
Pappy out of the cherry-bruises,
Froth the veins of thee, wild, wild maiden.
With hair that musters
In globèd clusters,
In tumbling clusters, like swarthy grapes,
Round thy brow and thine ears o'ershaden;
With the burning darkness of eyes like pansies,
Like velvet pansies
Where through escapes
The splendid might of thy conflagrate fancies;
With robe gold-tawny not hiding the shapes
Of the feet whereunto it falleth down,
Thy naked feet unsandalled;
With robe gold-tawny that does not veil
Feet where the red
Is meshed in the brown,
Like a rubied sun in a Venice-sail. ~ Francis Thompson

But you have no understanding of the depths of Kashmiri duplicity, Musa thought but did not say. You have no idea how a people like us, who have survived a history and a geography such as ours, have learned to drive our pride underground. Duplicity is the only weapon we have. You don't know how radiantly we smile when our hearts are broken. How ferociously we can turn on those we love while we graciously embrace those whom we despise. You have no idea how warmly we can welcome you when all we really want is for you to go away. Your thermometer is quite useless here. ~ Arundhati Roy

I wear embarrassing like a velvet coat of awesomeness. ~ Lindy Zart

Just after midnight, I text my parents who live in Florida: Please tell me you didn't help elect him.

No reply.

The next morning, New York City wakes up with a wet, gray yawn. The air is thick with mist. The city moves at a slower, muffled pace. New Yorkers rarely make eye contact; today isn't much different, except when eyes meet, they lock for a moment in shared grief. Everyone's shoulders bend forward, the world weighing heavier on them than it did yesterday.

The sidewalks and the coffee shops are quiet. Even the subway paces through its underground veins in somber silence. My husband tells me: "The city hasn't been this quiet since 9/11."

- Melissa Lirtsman ~ Erin Passons

Yet velvet curtains, soft cheese, compelling work and boys who can run full-tilt - it isn't enough. And if it isn't, it isn't. There's no living with that. The world is made from our imagination; our eyes enliven it, as our hands give it shape. Wanting makes it thrive; meaning is what you put in, not what you extract. You only see what you are inclined to see, and no more. We have to make the new. ~ Hanif Kureishi

The young gentlemen who came calling seemed especially puzzling. They sat in their velvet shirts and their leather boots, nibbling burnt cakes and praising Diamond's mind, and all the while their eyes said other things. Now, their eyes said. Now. Then: Patience, patience. 'You are flowers,' their mouths said, 'You are jewels, you are golden dreams.' Their eyes said: I eat flowers, I burn with dreams, I have a tower without a door in my heart, and I will keep you there ... ~ Patricia A. McKillip

When I look for help in developing my pastoral craft and nurturing my pastoral vocation, the one century that has the least to commend it is the twentieth. Has any century been so fascinated with gimmickry, so surfeited with fads, so addicted
to nostrums, so unaware of God, so out of touch with the underground spiritual streams which water eternal life? ~ Eugene H. Peterson

I felt myself a new species of child. Not a boy (most assuredly) but neither a (mere) girl. That skirt-bound race perpetually moving about serving tea had nothing to do with me.

I had such high hopes, you see.

The boundaries of the world seemed vast. I would visit Rome, Paris, Constantinople. Underground cafés presented in my mind where, crushed against wet walls, a (handsome, generous) friend and I sat discussing - many things. Deep things, new ideas. Strange green lights shone in the streets, the sea lapped nearby against greasy tilted moorings; there was trouble afoot, a revolution, into which my friend and I must - Well, as is often the case, my hopes were…not realized. ~ George Saunders

Just as if I was one of those true knights you love so well, yes. What do you think a knight is for, girl? You think it's all taking favours from ladies and looking fine in gold plate? Knights are for killing ... I killed my first man at twelve. I've lost count of how many I've killed since then. High lords with old names, fat rich men dressed in velvet, knights puffed up like bladders with their honours, yes, and women and children too - they're all meat, and I'm the butcher. Let them have their lands and their gods and their gold. Let them have their sers.' Sandor Clegane spat at her feet to show what he thought of that. 'So long as I have this,' he said, lifting the sword from her throat, 'there's no man on earth I need fear. ~ George R R Martin

And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.

Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave. ~ Plato

All the fairy tales of Aladdin, or the invisible Gyges, or the talisman that opens kings' palaces, or the enchanted halls underground or in the sea, are only fictions to indicated the one miracle of intellectual enlargement. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've been known to write on the Underground in London and on the subway in New York. I have two or three cafes in Paris that I go into. I find a corner with a little shade, and I can work. ~ Douglas Kennedy

Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep. ~ Edward Hoagland

He wasn't the type of cowboy she was supposed to want, but to pretend she didn't was a lie. ~ Kait Ballenger

Were they my brothers, my uncles, those creatures shuffling brimstone-eyed from room to room, or sitting separate, isolated, muttering forever like underground rivers, each in his private, inviolable gloom? ~ John Gardner

All unwillingly I opened my eyes - then I opened them wider, and lifted my head. The heat, my weariness, were quite forgotten. Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this there was a girl: the most marvellous girl - I knew it at once! - that I had ever seen. ~ Sarah Waters

The Fates themselves grant us one or two places in our lives where the thread untwists and we can follow either one strand or the other. Better to know when and where those choices will come to us instead of being taken by surprise. "
"Why only one or two?" I asked, thinking of all the moments my life had already accumulated in which I'd chosen to follow a different path than the one most people would expect of me. "Why not say that every day lets me choose my own future?"
The priest chuckled. "What a gift you have for joking, Lady Helen! You know your future. You'll be Sparta's queen, living a life blessed by the gods. Your only surprises will be the name of your husband and whether your babies will be sons or daughters. You don't need to visit the Pythia. But your noble brothers will be heroes, making their own futures; heroes should know what awaits them."
"He's right, Helen," Castor said. "Polydeuces and I should know our fate."
Castor's fate? He didn't need an oracle to discover that; I could tell him exactly what it would be. The young priest's glib words were better than underground fumes for giving me a vision of what lay in store for both of my brothers: They were going to have their ears filled with flattery, then be persuaded to leave a rich gift at Apollo's shrine just to hear some poor girl babble riddles while she choked half to death on smoke. Then they'd made another offering just to have Apollo's priests translate the Pythia's wild words. ~ Esther M. Friesner

We're kissing in the rain.' Her voice was hard and soft at the same time. Like the velvet armchairs. Like the black rain inked on his hand. ~ Deborah Levy

He calls me his Queen of the Night. He shows me the wonders in this incredible city. He encourages me to find my own way, and to choose what I think is right or wrong.
And the sex, God, the sex! I never knew what sex was until him! It's not soft music and candlelight, a choice, a deliberate action.
It's as involuntary as breathing, and as impossible not to do. It's slammed up against a wall in a dark alley, or flat on my back on cold concrete because I can't stand one more second without him. It's on my hands and knees, dry-mouthed, heart-in-my-throat, waiting for the moment he touches me, and I'm alive again. It's punishing and purifying, velvet and violent, and it makes everything else melt away, until nothing matters but getting him inside me and I wouldn't just die for him - I'd kill for him, too.
Like I did tonight. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Except in the areas of civil rights and medical marijuana, the legacy of the sixties counterculture has been largely superficial. Still, though the light has dimmed and gone underground, something in me would like to think the sixties phenomenon was a dress rehearsal for a grander, wider leap in consciousness yet to come. ~ Tom Robbins

The sparkling smile became enormous. 'Do you think she has a dagger there? Do you? Ask her, M. Francis? For,' said the most noble and most powerful Princess Mary Stewart, Queen of Scotland, delving furiously under all the stiff red velvet, showing shift, hose and garters, shoes, knees and a long ribboned end of something recently torn loose, and emerging therefrom with a fist closed tight on an object short and hard and glittering, 'for I have!' And breathlessly, flinging back her head, with the little knife offered like a quill, 'Try to stab me!' she encouraged her visitor. There was a queer silence, during which the eyes of Oonagh O'Dwyer and her love of one night met and locked like magnet and iron. The child, waiting a moment, offered again, the ringing, joyful defiance still in her voice. 'Try to stab me! … Go on, and I'll kill you all dead!'

Her throat dry, Oonagh spoke. 'Save your steel for those you trust. They are the ones who will carry your bier; the men who cannot hate, nor can they know love. Send away the cold servants.' The red mouth had opened a little; the knife hung forgotten in her hand.

'I would,' said Mary, surprised. 'But I do not know any.' And, anxiously demonstrating her point, she caught Lymond by the hand. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

The concern scientists had regarding passenger viruses was not unfounded. You may recall the disastrous SV40 monkey virus which contaminated the polio vaccines. There are scientists who claim this virus is the cause of multiple human cancers. On CDC's website a page on vaccine safety, which was suddenly removed (archived copies exist), states that: "SV40 virus has been found in certain types of cancer in humans, but it has not been determined that SV40 causes these cancers. ~ James Morcan

The night is always old. He'd walked too often down dark streets in the secret hours and felt the night stretching away, and known in his blood that while days and kings and empires come and g, the night is always the same age, always aeons deep. Terrors unfolded in the velvet shadows and while the nature of the talons may change, the nature of the beast does not. ~ Terry Pratchett

I like Jay-Z, 50 Cent and Common. But I like the underground stuff like Young Jeezy, Black Rob and Shine. I also love heavy metal like Slipknot and Pantera, It's very intense stuff. ~ Vanilla Ice

So many people had tried for Blake, but so many had failed. All it takes is one to be the glue. It's going to be me. Livia moved quietly to straddle him. She put her hands on his scruffy cheeks. "I know all that you are. You almost don't belong here, your soul's so pure." Livia put a hand on his chest. "You're perfect to me. You're chivalrous to me. I adore your manners. You can't disappoint me. It's not possible." Livia leaned in and kissed him sweetly. See? See how much I can fix?
Blake became absorbed by her hair, grabbing handfuls of it. He pulled her to his chest, combing it out with his fingers as he hummed a soothing song in her ear. The liquid velvet of his voice lifted her into dreams. ~ Debra Anastasia

Sail the Lost Sea America's largest underground lake is tucked away beneath Tennessee, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. After you tour the caves 140 feet belowground, hop into a glass-bottom boat to float across the Lost Sea and spot large collections of wild-looking cave formations and 20,000-year-old jaguar tracks. ~ Anonymous

The setting sun had turned the blue sky a brilliant orange, then soft pink merging to pearl; the plum velvet of night had come out of the east, spangled with stars. ~ Paul Gallico

But do you know what: I am convinced that we underground folk ought to be kept on a curb. Though we may sit forty years underground without speaking, when we do come out into the light of day and break out we talk and talk and talk.... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If they drive God from earth, we shall shelter him underground - Dmitri Karamazov ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You look beautiful, ma'am," Ernestine said, delighted with the results of her work. She had drawn Phoebe's hair up into a coil of neatly pinned rolls and curls, winding a velvet ribbon around the base. A few loose curls had been allowed to dangle down the back of her head, which felt a bit strange: she wasn't accustomed to leaving any loose pieces in her usual hairstyles. Ernestine had finished the arrangement by pinning a small, fresh pink rose on the right side of the coil.
The new coiffure was very flattering, but the formal gown had turned out to be far less inconspicuous than Phoebe had expected. It was the pale beige of unbleached linen or natural wool, but the silk had been infused with exceptionally fine metallic threads of gold and silver, giving the fabric a pearly luster. A garland of peonies, roses, and delicate green silk leaves trimmed the deeply scooped neckline, while another flower garland caught up the gossamer-thin silk and tulle layers of the skirts at one side. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I therefore invite you all, Mr Fox went on, 'to stay here with me for ever.'
For ever!' they cried. 'My goodness! How marvellous!' And Rabbit said to Mrs Rabbit, 'My dear, just think! We're never going to be shot again in our lives!'
We will make,' said Mr Fox, 'a little underground village, with streets and houses on each side - seperate houses for Badgers and Moles and Rabbits and Weasels and Foxes. And every day I will go shopping for you all. And every day we will eat like kings.'
The cheering that followed this speech went on for many minutes. ~ Roald Dahl

And yet, I seemed to feel my eyes bound, too, with bands of silk. And at my throat there was a velvet collar. ~ Sarah Waters

A lot of punk rock. I listen to various stuff just cuz my friends now listen to a lot of different bands. I listen to a lot of underground stuff like jungle music. ~ Cassie Steele

The Thwaites lived on Central Park West in the upper Eighties, in a building that, while manifestly grand, particularly to someone from Ohio, was by no means the most elegant among its neighbors. Its lobby, for one thing, was little more than a wide corridor, with two drably upholstered wing chairs propped against a wall and, between them, a glass table upon which rested an elaborate but unaesthetic arrangement of silk flowers. The light in the corridor was greenish, dim and lavatorial, barely illuminating the shallowly carved figures that marched, in pseudo-Egyptian fashion, along the pink stone tiles as far as the elevator. The floor, incongruously, was of a black and white parquet, upon which all but the softest slippers echoed ominously. And the elevator itself - paneled, with brass fixtures and a single tiny red velvet stool, presumably for its operator's comfort - seemed again of a different, though no less ancient, era. ~ Claire Messud

Leaning over the bright display among the back aisles of a forbidden arcade, rows of other players silent, unnoticed, closing time never announced, playing for nothing but the score itself, the row of numbers, a chance of entering her initials among those of other strangers for a brief time, no longer the time the world observed but game time, underground time, time that could take her nowhere outside its own tight and falsely deathless perimeter. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Early on Monday evening, when the sky was the color of a velvet ribbon falling over the hills. ~ Alice Hoffman

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters. ~ Margaret Atwood

I wonder now about Demeter and Persephone. Maybe Persephone was glad to run off with the king of death to his underground realm, maybe it was the only way she could break away from her mother, maybe Demeter was a bad parent the way Lear was a bad parent, denying nature, including the nature of children to leave their parents. Maybe Persephone thought Hades was the infinitely cool older man who held the knowledge she sought, maybe she loved the darkness, the six months of winter, the sharp taste of pomegranates, the freedom from her mother, maybe she knew that to be truly alive death had to be part of the picture just as winter must. It was as the queen of hell that she became an adult and came into power. Hades's realm is called the underworld, and so are the urban realms of everything outside the law. And as in Hopi creation myths, where humans and other beings emerge from underground, so it's from the underground that culture emerges in this civilization. ~ Rebecca Solnit

I'm only keeping in touch with you for the sake of the children. Way to look after our son, by the way. I let you have him for the weekend and before I know it he's chained underground, awaiting Last Times and stinking of mead. ~ Joanne Harris

Something about the floating club reminded him of Wonderland. Not Disney's Wonderland, either, but Wonderland according to Lewis Carroll: dark, sumptuous. Treacherous. It was the sort of place where anything could happen ... and probably did. He had a feeling if a deranged, bloodthirsty monarch suddenly swept in and started demanding people's heads, no one would bat an eye. ~ Laura Oliva

Her eyes, they shone like diamonds I thought her the queen of the land And her hair, it hung over her shoulder Tied up with a black velvet band. ~ James Patterson

We were in the autumnlands.
Dim as it was, the forest glowed. The golden leaves flashing by blazed like sparks caught in the updraft of a fire. A scarlet carpet unrolled before us, rich and flawless as velvet. Rising from the forest floor, the black, tangled roots breathed a bluish mist that reduced the farthest trees' trunks to ghostly silhouettes, yet left their foliage's luminous hues untouched. Vivid moss speckled the branches like tarnished copper. The crisp spice of pine sap infused the cool air over a musty perfume of dry leaves. A knot swelled in my throat. I couldn't look away. There was too much of it, too fast. I'd never be able to drink it all in... ~ Margaret Rogerson

The American indie underground made music for like-minded people who thought for themselves. Thinking for yourself is intrinsically subversive. ~ Michael Azerrad

Gary Allan has long been one of country's most reliably velvet-voiced beautiful losers. ~ Chuck Eddy

Still, I wasn't as certain as I tried to sound. And I wondered why it wasn't underputter - you know, for the one who puts them underground. Surely to take them seemed a bit excessive. I mean if they were dead. They wouldn't need the company on the way. Like you would take your sister to the drug store but you would put your bike in the garage. I loved the play of words and the meanings of them. ~ Thomas Lynch

He did not want to fail, when the Bee Master had trusted him with the home and the possessions and the occupation that were all he had of his very own, and he did not know that as the storm drew nearer, as the clouds grew blacker, as the heat waves resolved themselves into definite flashes of lightning, as the night closed down black as velvet around him, he did not realize that his moral and mental forces were rising with the tide of the storm, that all the remnants of manhood left in his shaken body were gathering together for some sort of culmination, just as presently the storm would reach its height and then subside. ~ Gene Stratton-Porter

I mean there's certainly a lot of progressive rock and metal that exists at the underground level, which has its own vitality, as it should. But it seems to have lost its ability to really charge up the hill. ~ Billy Corgan