Top 80 Laurie Anderson Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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.”

— Laurie Anderson

52. “I’m thrilled by the fact that I made something out of nothing. There it is! It wasn’t there before: there it is – I made it! That’s pretty powerful, and that’s the power that Buddhists give to every single person.”

— Laurie Anderson

53. “As an artist I’d choose the thing that’s beautiful more than the one that’s true.”

— Laurie Anderson

54. “I’m not usually where I think I am. It’s kind of spooky.”

— Laurie Anderson

55. “I’m actually not someone who believes in heaven or anything like that.”

— Laurie Anderson

56. “It’s good to take a longer view and think, what would I really like to do if I had no limitations whatsoever?”

— Laurie Anderson

57. “I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.”

— Laurie Anderson

58. “So many things have happened to me in my life that I could be phobic about.”

— Laurie Anderson

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

— Laurie Anderson

60. “Books are the way the dead talk to the living.”

— Laurie Anderson

61. “I don’t take compliments so well. I always hang my head and shuffle and kind of try to immediately forget.”

— Laurie Anderson

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

— Laurie Anderson

63. “Your eyes. It’s a day’s worth of work to look into them.”

— Laurie Anderson

64. “That’s really a very different experience: You don’t have to look to be understood. You’re already understood.”

— Laurie Anderson

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

— Laurie Anderson

66. “Dogs don’t just like us, they love us, and they admire us. The big reason they admire us is we invented cars. They’re like, “Yes, we get to go somewhere!” Go somewhere faster, with their head out the window, and their ears, like, “Yes! Yes!””

— Laurie Anderson

67. “I know a lot of people who have weird specialties that are not taught in schools; they’re things that you learn in life.”

— Laurie Anderson

68. “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.”

— Laurie Anderson

69. “I kind of didn’t believe the doctors when they came over and they said you’re not going to be able to walk again. I’m sorry to tell you this. I thought who is this guy? I just was so impatient with the whole thing. I knew I was going to walk again. I knew that I was going to do that.”

— Laurie Anderson

70. “A lot of artists who have a certain style are expected to more or less keep doing their style. It’s so easy to get into that rut of production.”

— Laurie Anderson

71. “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.”

— Laurie Anderson

72. “It’s the tradition of American writers getting away in order to see the country – to get a better view.”

— Laurie Anderson

73. “I’m one of the first Americans who wasn’t a torturer or an interrogator.”

— Laurie Anderson

74. “I have written a lot about snakes. There’s something pretty primordial about it.”

— Laurie Anderson

75. “I really like books that you can kind of hear as much as think about, that are so graphic and visual.”

— Laurie Anderson

76. “I think a lot of people in Washington are extremely suspicious of NASA.”

— Laurie Anderson

77. “What happens when you’re in a crash is you join a crash club, and you talk endlessly about your crash because you don’t want to bore your friends with it. And they’ve heard about the crash so many times.”

— Laurie Anderson

78. “The expert is someone who carries malpractice insurance.”

— Laurie Anderson

79. “As a New Yorker, I’m someone who lives on an island and looks across to America.”

— Laurie Anderson

80. “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.”

— Laurie Anderson

81. “I think women are excellent social critics.”

— Laurie Anderson

82. “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.”

— Laurie Anderson

83. “Gut level is a good level to deal with life, and for me, I have to say that Buddhism makes sense for me because it’s how I’m an artist.”

— Laurie Anderson

84. “I so much appreciate it when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist – I’m happy to see the work.”

— Laurie Anderson

85. “I really trust audiences as having excellent taste, for the most part.”

— Laurie Anderson

86. “I’m an average enough person to point to the things I’ve gotten to see that are awe-inspiring.”

— Laurie Anderson

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

— Laurie Anderson

88. “No single person who has ever lived will be able to tell you what happens. Period. Nobody’s right and nobody’s wrong.”

— Laurie Anderson

89. “Audiences, whether they’re seeing a film or a reading or whatever it is, a concert, they decide very quickly what kind of show it is, and then they judge it. They judge the rest of the thing by whether it conforms to their rules for what a good symphony orchestra would be.”

— Laurie Anderson