Best 104 quotes of Iggy Pop on MyQuotes

It's more fun to look at an old picture of me than it is to look at a new one sometimes. Although, I still wear a dress pretty well.

It's the same thing: I would think, "If I can't go out and pull some teenager tonight, maybe I'm no good on stage anymore." And you start to think that you even need it as a motivation. I did, anyway.

I've probably been spit on more that any person alive outside of, I would say, a member of the prison system.

I wanted to learn a little bit about acting, not because I thought I'd find a star vehicle and set the world on fire, but I thought the discipline of it would be good for me. I met a good coach, and I joined her class - with a lot of hungry young actors who really didn't acre if I was a rock 'n' roll singer or not. I started to learn to get a focus, without having to jump up and down every few seconds.

I was a pretty nice kid. Kind of quiet, but quiet in terms I wasn't going out and setting fire to anything. I had a big mouth and I was creative type, you know.

I was feeling that I was the in the dead-end circuit from 1980 to 1983, and I didn't know what else to do. I remember doing a show in some college town, in a tiny club, and afterward some fans came back. I thought I had done good gig and they were going to tell me that.

I wasn't so stupid that I didn't realize the implications of what they were saying. In my live work I was going for the quick thrill, rather than spending time concentrating on my voice. I figured I'd get on, make as many quick movement as possible, dance my ass off for five minutes, move into the insult portion of the evening, and then, at the end, create some kind of chaos until the 55 minutes were up.

I was who I was in high school in accordance with the rules of conduct for a normal person, like obeying your mom and dad. Then I got out of high school and moved out of the house, and I just started, for lack of a better term, running free.

Life is just a bag of pot.

Living in England was wonderfully civil and easy-going.

Look, you're here to see me, and I can't go on until my dealer is here, and he's waiting to be paid, so give me some money so I can fix up, and then you'll get your show.

Miami is nothing like me, and thats why I need to be here - its the opposite. Im practical, where this place is moody, Im stolid in my interior, where this place has a certain flair, and Im materialistic in a sense that this place is fundamentally spiritual - theres a quicksilver quality about this place.

Miami's never been more than a spit from New York.

Miami's not anybody's poor cousin. It's an aspiration to live in this town, not something you have to do to promote yourself like some of the larger cities.

Musical types tend to combine the burden of the author with the burden of the actor.

My general take on American music since 1969 is that it's just getting stiffer and people are getting more uptight - audience, performance, and palace guard.

My mom was a saint. She taught me to be terminally nice.

My parents wanted to light my artistic candle. But over time, the definition of 'the arts' began to stretch. And as I got older, they suddenly realized, Oh, my God, we're the parents of Iggy Pop.

Nihilism is best done by professionals.

Nobody understands me, I'm really sensitive.

Onstage I've been hit by a grapefruit, beercans, eggs, spit, money, cigarette butts, Mandies, Quaaludes, joints, bras, panties, and a fist.

Punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it.

Pussy power's pulling me down, down, down, down. When it's there and I can't have it, I get real real rabid.

Really good music isn't just to be heard, you know? It's almost like a hallucination

Second only to the sea, the Miami sky has been the greatest comfort in my life past 50. On a good day, when the wind blows from the south, the light here is diffuse and forgiving.

Sex may be a little more factual than love. You know whether it's good or bad. You know whether you liked it or not. You're not going to change your mind about it ten years later.

Something I like to do a lot is just sit by water when there’s a current and just stare into the water. I don’t fish, I don’t hunt, I don’t scuba, I don’t spear, don’t boat, don’t play basketball or football – I excel at staring into space. I’m really good at that.

Stages are getting higher and higher, and I'm getting older and older.

Studios are like hospitals. A lot of people check in, and they don't check out.

The 2 things I like the most are girls and loud noises.

The key to The Doors is the culture behind the myth.

The most successful stuff is sold to you as indispensable social information. The message in the music is, 'We are terribly, terribly slick and suave, and if you listen to us, you can probably get a leg up in society, too.'

The nut of the thing is that if what you make is hard like a diamond, you can put it anywhere. You can put it up your and it will still be beautiful.

The people who were learning from me tended to be more commercial performers who were gonna rip off the salient idea to do it in a way that will sell, but they weren't going for the music.

The problem being: for years I was struggling - first to prove that I had any talent, then to create some skills and finally to fulfil it reasonably. But then once I got there it was, "OK. I did that, but I want to be happy." And that's a whole different deal. It's kind of like a dance. Being active seems to help. I'm 70, so sometimes a little voice is going, "Just take it easy".

There are no pimps, no whores, no transvestites - gone. Now that's more the culture I'm comfortable in ... I don't like it in the house, you know what I mean, but I like it somewhere around.

There was a time when I wanted to get out of the Western world. I went down to Grenada and looked at a place, and I realised that if I lived in a Grenadian manner I'd be nothing but a blah. I'm going to need constant bodyguarding, guns and money to join the community there. Otherwise you just got a bunch of fat, old white people dying together, overeating, drinking. Not very attractive.

The Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame was a great idea when it started, but I think they ought to close it, I think it's full.

They say that death kills you, But death doesn't kill you. Boredom and indifference kill you.

Well, after Zombie Birdhouse came out, I toured behind it in the fall of 1982, into the spring, and in the summer in the Far East. At that time, I found my work self-referential; it was getting to be rock songs about a rock singer who lived a rock life on the rock road, and I was starting to wonder what I would be like to rent my own apartment, what it would be like to have a checkbook.

Well, I don't use the toilet much to pee in. I almost always pee in the yard or the garden, because I like to pee on my estate.

Well, it wasn't like I was going to run out and score heroin and score an ounce of coke - but incidentally, on the road, I would usually get tanked up and as stoned as I possibly could to go on stage. And offstage, it would be a demon that would come up about twice a week.

Well, the stuff that has become more commercial doesn't have any edge.

What did Christ really do? He hung out with hard-drinking fishermen.

What some people would call antics, I would just call a good show.

What the world needs right now... a good, artistic, gothic, terrifying scare

When I get up in the morning, I stay nude for three or four hours. If I really feel like getting formal, I'll put on board shorts.

When it comes to art, money is an unimportant detail. It just happens to be a huge unimportant detail.

When punk began to be a genre, people were going to go out and try to mine it. Some of the better groups, like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, were very artificial.

When the 'godfather of punk' thing started floatin' around, it was, I was really, really embarrassed. I thought I should have a great, big rig and a cape and everything, and it was very embarrassing. And then after a while, you learn that if people call you anything, this is a great gift.