Best 98 quotes of Laurie Anderson on MyQuotes

It's the tradition of American writers getting away in order to see the country - to get a better view.

I've been trying to avoid goal-oriented behavior.

I've never really had a hobby, unless you count art, which the IRS once told me I had to declare as a hobby since I hadn't made money with it.

I wanted to impress people because I was kind of a kid who was lost in the crowd - was sort of my, feeling about childhood was being part of a big family.

I wanted to stay hooked because it was the first time I've been part of the tradition where forgetting was just fine. You do it, you try, you forget, you fail.

. . . I wrote a letter to Thomas Pynchon asking, Can I have your permission to try to make an [adaptation] of your book? And I had no idea that he would answer me, because he's pretty elusive. But he did send a letter back that said, Yes, you can do that - as long as the only instrument in the opera is a banjo. I thought, That's an interesting way of saying No.

Last night, I had that dream again. I dreamt I had to take a test, in a Dairy Queen, on another planet.

Literature is the safe and traditional vehicle through which we learn about the world and pass on values from on generation to the next. Books save lives.

My job is to make images and leave the decision-making and conclusion-draw ing to other people.

My secret dream is to write an epic poem. That's probably the most pretentious thing I've said.

My work is more about trying to ask good questions and not trying to come up with big shows. Every fashion company is doing that, every car company is doing that.

Not many people care what you do. They care about what you do as much as you care about what they do. Think about it. Just exactly that much. You are not the center of the universe.

Paradise Is exactly like Where you are right now Only much much Better.

People are really suffering these days. There's a lot of corporate triumph and a lot of personal despair as they wonder what are they working for.

People only stutter at the beginning of the word. They're not afraid when they get to the end of the word. There's just regret.

People who were born alone are defined by feelings like "Who's gonna be with me when I die? Who will ever understand me? Will I always feel so alone? Maybe if I write a book..." and you forget that that doesn't help you so much.

Performance art is about joy, about making something that's so full of kind of a wild joy that you really can't put into words.

Shining in the midnight moonlight, while the King sings love me tender.

Some friends of mine work in an office. They were getting really nervous from their coffee breaks, so they started to have wig breaks. They tried on wigs for 15 minutes. They found this relaxing. So that's Wig Therapy.

Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.

Technology today is the campfire around which we tell our stories. There's this attraction to light and to this kind of power, which is both warm and destructive. We're especially drawn to the power. Many of the images of technology are about making us more powerful, extending what we can do. Unfortunately, 95 percent of this is hype, because I think we're powerful without it.

That's really a very different experience: You don't have to look to be understood. You're already understood.

The audience creates its own personality, I've noticed, in the first five minutes. They will either be generous, funny, silly, withholding, academic, analytical, grudging. And I'm fascinated with how that gets constructed, because it happens right away.

The best thing about the term 'performance artist' is that it includes just about everything you might want to do.

The fewer expectations you have, the better.

The main thing that attracts me to Buddhism is probably what attracts every artist to being an artist - that it's a godlike thing. You are the ultimate authority. There is no other ultimate authority.

The only stuff I don't like are Broadway musicals. I hate them. I don't even like to talk about it. I can't bear musicals.

The problem with prototypes is they don't always work.

There are plenty of ways you can play the game of fighting and really seem to be fighting without going for the jugular.

The right to carry a gun has nothing to do with the rights of other people.

The world is a strange and wonderful place.

They say that Heaven is like TV... a perfect little world, that doesn't really need you.

We want to dedicate our music tonight to the great opportunity that we all have to begin to truly understand the events of the past few days and to act upon them with courage and with compassion as we make our plans to live in a completely new world.

When I was four, I was a kind of sky worshipper. I would look at the sky, and I wanted to evaporate into the sky - I loved the sky. I loved looking at the trees, just because they touched the sky.

When love is gone, there's always justice. And when justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi, Mom!

When love is gone, there's always justice.

When you follow your thoughts and watch them attach to certain things, it makes certain things real and other things unreal, and you realize that this is all created by your mind.

When you meet a man who is broken, pick him up and carry him. When you meet a woman who’s broken, put her all into your arms. Cause we don’t know where we come from … we don’t know where we are.

Why do you have to translate and decode things? Just let the image be. It will have a special kind of reality that it won't once it's decoded.

Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something.

You can do great things with low-tech stuff.

You know, for every dollar a man makes a woman makes 63 cents. Now, fifty years ago that was 62 cents. So, with that kind of luck, it’ll be the year 3,888 before we make a buck.

You know, I can see two tiny pictures of myself And there's one in each of your eyes. And they're doin' everything I do. Every time I light a cigarette, they light up theirs. I take a drink and I look in and they're drinkin' too. It's drivin' me crazy. It's drivin' me nuts.

You know the reason I love the stars is because we can't hurt them: we can't burn them, we can't melt them , we can't make them overflow, we can't flood them or burn them up—so we keep reacing for them

You need to try to master the ability to feel sad without actually being sad.

and there was a beautiful view but nobody could see cause everybody on the island was saying look at me

Well it was one of those days Larger than life When your friends came to dinner And they stayed the night And then they cleaned out the refrigerator And ate everything in sight And then they stayed up in the livingroom And cried all night Strange angels Singing just for me Old stories Haunting me This is nothing Like I thought it would be . . . .

You can dance. You can make me laugh. You've got x-ray eyes. You know how to sing. You're a diplomat. You've got it all. Everybody loves you. You can charm the birds out of the sky, But I, I've got one thing. You always know just what to say And when to go, But I've got one thing. You can see in the dark, But I've got one thing: I loved you better. Last night I woke up, Saw this angel. He flew in my window. And he said, Girl, pretty proud of yourself, huh?" And I looked around and said, Who me?" And he said, "The higher you fly, the faster you fall." He said, "Send it up. Watch it rise. See it fall, Gravity's rainbow. Send it up. Watch it rise. See it fall, Gravity's Angel.