Quotes By 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.

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

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

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

Music was what bothered me, what interested me.

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

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

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

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.

I don't believe in dressing up reality. I don't believe in using makeup to make things look smoother.

I'm a humanist.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

I don't like overdubs, never liked them.

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.

If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.

The music business doesn't interest me anymore.

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

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

Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony.

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

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

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

I tried to give up drugs by drinking.

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

Me, I've concentrated on music pretty much to the exclusion of other things.

I can concentrate on my art.