The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.
The first mistake of art is to assume that it’s serious.
Don’t ask me why I obsessively look to rock ’n’ roll bands for some kind of model for a better society. I guess it’s just that I glimpsed something beautiful in a flashbulb moment once, and perhaps mistaking it for prophecy have been seeking its fulfillment ever since.
They wouldn’t be heroes if they were infallible, in fact they wouldn’t be heroes if they weren’t miserable wretched dogs, the pariahs of the earth, besides which the only reason to build up an idol is to tear it down again.
A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might wanta accomplish on your own.
Style is originality; fashion is fascism. The two are eternally and unalterably opposed.
The whole point of American culture is to pick up any old piece of trash and make it shine with more facets than the Hope Diamond.
Sometimes I think nothing is simple but the feeling of pain.
The only questions worth asking today are whether humans are going to have any emotions tomorrow, and what the quality of life will be if the answer is no.
The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience.
Realizing that life is precious the natural tendency is to trample on it, like laughing at a funeral.
Nothing ever quite dies, it just comes back in a different form.
Music, you know, true music not just rock ‘n’ roll, chooses you.
The Mekons are the most revolutionary group in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.
All blues singers are great liars.
I mean Iggy and The Stooges first couple of albums I think sold twenty five thousand between the two of them you know and so to talk in terms of an underground I mean you have to go really to the independent labels and things like that.
The extravagant and ostentatious lifestyles that pass for charisma in a time when almost anybody talks about charisma but if you think about it there’s precious little to be seen.
I’m not saying that all college students are subhuman – I’m just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, these are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts.