Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Lou Reed, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Lou Reed quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 201 Lou Reed quotes for you to read and share.
You know the expression 'God protects fools and drunks'? I qualify for both. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
Here's to Mulberry Jane
She made jam when she came
Somebody cut off her feet
Now jelly rolls in the street. -- Lou Reed
Please don't set me free Death means a lot me -- Lou Reed
I don't know anyone actually who does care what a critic says. -- Lou Reed
I have no control over the audience. I have no idea what they think. My heart's pure. I can't do anything. I really can't do anything. I don't know what goes on in the crowd. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz. -- Lou Reed
Some people drink to unleash their libidos, and other people drink to prop up their egos. -- Lou Reed
Eve kissed Able, that's how he got murdered by Cain. -- Lou Reed
Things always seem to end before they start -- 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
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. -- Lou Reed
I've made love to my mother, killed my father, and my brother. What am I to do? -- Lou Reed
As you practice things, you get better. I mean I've worked very hard on changing my life and taking what is good about it and trying to jettison the things I think were not good about it. I think the key word is "discipline," focus. I'm always working at it, but I'm not always successful. -- Lou Reed
I love Ornette Coleman. I love Don Cherry. I love the way those guys play. -- Lou Reed
I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all. Sometimes it's me, or a composite of me and other people. Sometimes it's not me at all. -- Lou Reed
Well, everybody does something, some people race cars, others collect stamps, I find tai chi to be philosophically, aesthetically, physically and spiritually fascinating. -- Lou Reed
Bodily changes take place, like the thing with the kick. -- Lou 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
Sound is more than just noise. Ordered sound is music. My life is music. -- 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
I can't tell the difference between wrong and right, are you laughing at me? -- Lou Reed
Some people are like human tuinals -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
Perfect Night has that magic and it has the raw energy that grabs you by the throat. -- Lou Reed
An eye for an eye is elemental. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
Me, I've concentrated on music pretty much to the exclusion of other things. -- Lou Reed
You can't always trust your mother. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
I've become completely well adjusted to being a cult figure. -- Lou Reed
I don't mind a repetitive chorus; I mind repetitive verse. I mean, it's the same amount of space. Why would you have only three diamonds if you can have six? -- Lou Reed
I don't know what goes on in the crowd. I've had them show up and throw beer cans at me. I caused riots in most of the major cities. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
But I found tai chi when I was studying with Leung Shum, who teaches Eagle Claw and Wu Hao. -- Lou Reed
There is only one good thing about small town
You know that you want to get out -- Lou Reed
Life's like a mayonnaise soda. -- Lou Reed
To debate political objectives, views, and goals is the most American thing conceivable. -- Lou Reed
She's my best friend, better than a dog or car. -- Lou Reed
When critics ask you if you feel vindicated by other critics - I didn't like critics then, and I don't like them now. There you go. I've always been outside the mainstream, and it stayed that way. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
I write whatever shows up. That's good enough for me. I'm part of the first generation that wants to still do original material and not tour around as an oldies act. -- Lou Reed
People can vote for who ever they want. That doesn't mean I have to go near them. -- Lou Reed
Research, research, research. It means everything. -- 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
The injuries we do in kind are visited upon us often. In the science of the mind, trying hard to move a shadow. -- Lou Reed
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, -- Lou Reed
I shot a vein in my neck and coughed up a quaalude. -- Lou Reed
The first generation of CDs sounded terrible. Any chance to remaster would make the music sound better than what was already out there. -- Lou Reed
Just a perfect day, problems all left alone. -- Lou Reed
I tried to give up drugs by drinking. -- Lou Reed
You can't beat two guitars, bass, and drums. -- Lou Reed
Speaking in a common tongue, speaking through guitars and drums. -- 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
Meditation doesn't have to be complicated. What I do is about as simple as you can get. You could just count the beads, one, two, three, with your eyes closed or open, whatever makes you happy. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
I would like to live to a ripe old age and raise watermelons in Wyoming. -- Lou Reed
Nothing beats 2 guitars, drum and bass. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
Honey, I'm a cocksucker, what are you? -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
I think it's important that people don't feel alone. -- Lou Reed
The most important part of my religion is to play guitar. -- 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
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
Between thought and expression lies a lifetime. -- Lou Reed
Caroline says as she gets up from the floor, you can hit me all you want to, but I don't love you anymore. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
The myriad choices of his fate
Set themselves out upon a plate
For him to choose
What had he to lose -- Lou Reed
I think that everything happens for a reason, everything happens when it's going to happen. -- Lou Reed
Any human being should have a tolerance for anybody. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
Valium would have helped that bash. -- Lou Reed
You do this because you like it, you think what you're making is beautiful. And if you think it's beautiful, maybe they think it's beautiful. -- Lou Reed
The heart says what only the heart knows. -- Lou Reed
My week beats your year. -- Lou Reed
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.. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
If it has more than three chords, it's jazz. -- Lou Reed
Kill them now, cause I need some kicks. I need some kicks, I'm getting bored. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
Dear Pope, send me some hope or a rope. -- Lou Reed
Take a walk on the wild side. -- Lou Reed
Does anyone need yet another politician caught with his pants down and money sticking in his hole? -- Lou Reed
I'm still not sure I didn't die -- Lou Reed
You can't beat 2 guitars, bass, and drums. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
I'd breed a little liberal army in the wood, just like these redneck lunatics I see at the local bar with their tribe of mutant inbred piglets. -- Lou Reed
Underachievers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose except your fright. -- Lou Reed
I've gone out with my shotgun. This is hunting country out there. You better run. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
I don't like overdubs, never liked them. -- Lou Reed
I had started also studying because I wanted to learn more about power and fighting. -- Lou Reed
I wanna hear some Diana Ross, I wanna hear some Marvin Gaye. I wanna hear a song that reminds me of a better day. -- Lou Reed
I always believed that I have something important to say and I said it. -- Lou Reed
People think that I work out but it's all t'ai chi. -- Lou Reed
I think it's pretentious to create art just for the sake of stroking the artists ego. -- Lou Reed
First thing you learnis that you'vealways got to wait -- Lou Reed
Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony. -- Lou Reed
Writhe and sway to music's pain searing with asides, caress death with a lover's touch for it shall be your bride. -- Lou Reed
I wouldn't want to hear Beethoven without beautiful bass, the cellos, the tuba. It's very important. Hip-hop has thunderous bass. And so does Beethoven. If you don't have the bass, it's like being amputated. It's like you have no legs. -- Lou Reed
Why don't you swallow razor blades? -- Lou Reed
It takes a busload of faith to get by. -- Lou Reed
It's depressing when you're still around and your albums are out of print. -- Lou Reed
When he beat my mother it made me so mad. -- Lou Reed
How could you even dream or think something of someone who is as uncommercial as I am? -- Lou Reed
When I record an album I'm trying to get as close as possible to that perfect moment. -- Lou Reed
Families that live out in the suburbs often make each other cry. -- Lou Reed
I was a product of Andy Warhol's Factory. All I did was sit there and observe these incredibly talented and creative people who were continually making art, and it was impossible not to be affected by that. -- Lou Reed
My God is rock'n'roll. -- Lou Reed
The music is all. People should die for it. People are dying for everything else, so why not the music? -- Lou Reed
One thing I've often thought is that I never want to tell anybody else what to do. It's hard enough to figure out what I want to do. -- Lou Reed
Let's do what you fear most
That from which you recoil
But which still makes your eyes moist -- Lou Reed
But I'm also talented and I know when I created something great and Perfect Night is something great, no doubt, no but. -- Lou Reed
Jealousy endlessly eats through my mind, and jealously endlessly makes me be unkind. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
Plucked her eyebrows on the way, shaved her legs and then he was a she. She said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side. -- Lou Reed
The president's dead, no one can find his head, its been missing for two weeks. But no one seemed to notice it. -- Lou Reed
One of my rules is: Never listen to your old stuff. -- Lou Reed
When you pass through the fire, you pass through humble. -- Lou Reed
Perfect Night is minimalistic and that's what makes it so forceful. -- Lou Reed
High energy does not necessarily mean fast, high energy has to do with heart. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
I don't think I'm in any position to call myself a martial artist. I'm a student of the martial arts. -- Lou Reed
I try very much, whenever I do projects, whatever it is, there's only one thing on my mind, only one thing. -- 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
It's the music that kept us all intact, kept us from going crazy. -- Lou Reed
There's a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out. -- Lou Reed
Some even claim that I'm a terror, a dictator and they're right. -- Lou Reed
those were different times. -- Lou Reed
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. -- 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
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. -- Lou Reed
Stephanie says that she wants to know
Why she's given half her life,
to people she hates now -- Lou Reed
I can concentrate on my art. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
There's only X amount of time. You can do whatever you want with that time. It's your time. -- Lou Reed
She never ever lost her head even when she was giving head. -- Lou Reed
I don't like nostalgia unless it's mine. -- Lou Reed
That's why I survived because I still believe I've got something to say. -- Lou Reed
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 -- Lou Reed
The currents rage so deep upon us, this is the age of video violence. -- Lou Reed
I love women, I think they're great. -- Lou Reed
The rich son waits for his father to die, the poor just drink and cry. -- Lou Reed
Looking through the viewfinder for me is like being in a movie theater. That's what I like about it. -- Lou Reed
I'm in this business for too long to be halfhearted about anything. -- Lou Reed
I can create a vibe without saying anything, just by being in the room. -- Lou Reed
You can't ask me to explain the lyrics because I won't do it. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
I never liked the Beatles. I thought they were garbage. -- Lou Reed
I'll tell ya, I'm a genuinely nice guy. I really am. A real nice guy. But I think I'm temperamental. -- Lou Reed
I cleaned up my act because otherwise I would have kicked the bucket. -- 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
All the people have gone to war leaving no interrogator to mind. -- Lou Reed
The most important thing is work. -- Lou Reed
For a while, I felt a little self-impelled to write Lou Reed Kind of songs. I should have understood that a Lou Reed song was anything I wanted to write about. -- Lou Reed
And no kinds of love are better than others.
Some Kinda Love -- Lou Reed
Teach them about anger, the sin that comes with dawning. Teach them about flowers, and the beauty of forgiveness. -- Lou Reed
Don't the people you're around shape the music, is that what you're saying? Everything does. -- 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
This violent rage that turned inward cannot be helped by drink. -- Lou Reed
You're a musician: You play. That's what you do. -- Lou Reed
I'm too old to do things by half. -- Lou Reed
I don't believe in dressing up reality. I don't believe in using makeup to make things look smoother. -- Lou Reed
I don't really think about what the subject of my next album will be. I just know that I'm going to make another album. -- Lou Reed
You're going to reap just what you sow -- Lou Reed
I think life is far too short to concentrate on your past. I rather look into the future. -- Lou Reed
Anyone who ever had a heart,
He wouldn't turn around and break it.
Anyone who ever played a part,
he wouldn't turn around and fake it.
Sweet Jane -- Lou Reed
I've never been super confident about anything. The work is never as good as it could be. -- Lou Reed
I'm an artist and that means I can be as egotistical as I want to be. -- Lou Reed
You won't see my parents honored on any stamps. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
I want the principles of a timeless muse, I want to eradicate my negative views. -- Lou Reed
As the dead rise to live, the live sink to die, the currents are deep and raging inside. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
Herpes, AIDS, the Middle East at full throttle. Better check that sausage before you put it in the waffle. -- Lou Reed
Here comes Jesse Jackson, he talks of common ground. Does that common ground include me, or is it just a sound? -- Lou Reed
Senator, it has been reported that you have had illegal congress with your mother. -- Lou Reed
And I feel just like Jesus' son -- Lou Reed
It's just a temporary thing. -- Lou Reed
Music was what bothered me, what interested me. -- Lou Reed
I'd harbored hopes that the intelligence that once inhabited novels or films would ingest rock. I was, perhaps, wrong. -- Lou Reed
What I really love is my scotch. It's the power, the power of positive drinking. -- Lou Reed
The music business doesn't interest me anymore. -- Lou Reed
There are problems in these times, but none of them are mineI'm beginning to see the light -- Lou Reed
You've gotta blow the roof off of your heart and let the universe in. -- Lou Reed
Psychologically, it's better that I think that I'm dirt. -- Lou Reed
I think
I just don't know. -- Lou Reed
These are really terribly rough times, and we really should try to be as nice to each other as possible. -- Lou Reed
You know, when you're relaxed, you're putting it out there, and then it comes, oh, I can do that. -- Lou Reed
I wanted to be an actor. That was my real goal. But I wasn't any good at it, so I wrote my own material and acted through that. That's my idea of fun. I get to be all these things in the songs. -- Lou Reed
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. -- Lou Reed
Electricity comes from other planets. -- Lou Reed
They tied his arms behind his back to teach him how to swim, they put blood in his coffee and milk in his gin. -- Lou Reed
You do what you love, or you get arrested. -- Lou Reed