Lou Reed Quotes

I tried to give up drugs by drinking.

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

There's a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.

I think it's pretentious to create art just for the sake of stroking the artists ego.

Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony.

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

I'm a student of the martial arts.

Bodily changes take place, like the thing with the kick.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

You can't ask me to explain the lyrics because I won't do it.

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

My God is rock'n'roll.

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.

High energy does not necessarily mean fast, high energy has to do with heart.

I don't like overdubs, never liked them.

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.

There's only X amount of time. You can do whatever you want with that time. It's your time.

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

The music business doesn't interest me anymore.

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.

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.

People can vote for who ever they want. That doesn't mean I have to go near them.

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.

Music was what bothered me, what interested me.

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

That's why I survived because I still believe I've got something to say.

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.

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

I cleaned up my act because otherwise I would have kicked the bucket.

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

I try very much, whenever I do projects, whatever it is, there's only one thing on my mind, only one thing.

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

You know the expression 'God protects fools and drunks'? I qualify for both.

I'm too old to do things by half.

I can concentrate on my art.

I had started also studying because I wanted to learn more about power and fighting.

Perfect Night has that magic and it has the raw energy that grabs you by the throat.

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

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

I don't know anyone actually who does care what a critic says.