Top 180 Lou Reed Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Electricity comes from other planets.”

— Lou Reed

52. “She never ever lost her head even when she was giving head.”

— Lou Reed

53. “Plucked her eyebrows on the way, shaved her legs and then he was a she. She said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side.”

— Lou Reed

54. “I think it’s important that people don’t feel alone.”

— Lou Reed

55. “I was a product of Andy Warhol’s Factory. All I did was sit there and observe these incredibly talented and creative people who were continually making art, and it was impossible not to be affected by that.”

— Lou Reed

56. “The only thing constantly changing is change, and change is always changing for the worse.”

— Lou Reed

57. “I’m not leaving New York. And neither is anyone else. We’re here. We are quintessential Americans – we’re not only American, but New York-American.”

— Lou Reed

58. “The rich son waits for his father to die, the poor just drink and cry.”

— Lou Reed

59. “The sickness of the mother runs on through the girl, leaving her small and helpless. Liquor flies through her brain with the force of a gun, leaving her running in circles.”

— Lou Reed

60. “Please don’t set me free Death means a lot me.”

— Lou Reed

61. “They tied his arms behind his back to teach him how to swim, they put blood in his coffee and milk in his gin.”

— Lou Reed

62. “You do what you love, or you get arrested.”

— Lou Reed

63. “Herpes, AIDS, the Middle East at full throttle. Better check that sausage before you put it in the waffle.”

— Lou Reed

64. “Music should come crashing out of your speakers and grab you, and the lyrics should challenge whatever preconceived notions that listener has.”

— Lou Reed

65. “Here comes Jesse Jackson, he talks of common ground. Does that common ground include me, or is it just a sound?”

— Lou Reed

66. “Looking through the viewfinder for me is like being in a movie theater. That’s what I like about it.”

— Lou Reed

67. “When I saw that combination of grace and power, the fast and the soft, the yin and the yang, that’s what I’d been looking for.”

— Lou Reed

68. “You know, some people got no choice, and they can never find a voice, to talk with that they can even call their own. So the first thing that they see, that allows them the right to be, why they follow it, you know, it’s called bad luck...”

— Lou Reed

69. “I don’t like nostalgia unless it’s mine.”

— Lou Reed

70. “The president’s dead, no one can find his head, its been missing for two weeks. But no one seemed to notice it.”

— Lou Reed

71. “It always bothers me to see people writing RIP when a person dies. It just feels so insincere and like a cop out. To me, RIP is the microwave dinner of posthumous honours.”

— Lou Reed

72. “Families that live out in the suburbs often make each other cry.”

— Lou Reed

73. “Perfect Night has that magic and it has the raw energy that grabs you by the throat.”

— Lou Reed

74. “I wanna hear some Diana Ross, I wanna hear some Marvin Gaye. I wanna hear a song that reminds me of a better day.”

— Lou Reed

75. “To wish for the crazy times one last time and freeze it in the memory of a camera is the least a great artist can do.”

— Lou Reed

76. “When I was in college, I had a jazz radio show. I called it ‘Excursion on a Wobbly Rail,’ after a Cecil Taylor song. I used to run around the Village following Ornette Coleman wherever he played.”

— Lou Reed

77. “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.”

— Lou Reed

78. “I’m too old to do things by half.”

— Lou Reed

79. “Teach them about anger, the sin that comes with dawning. Teach them about flowers, and the beauty of forgiveness.”

— Lou Reed

80. “It’s the music that kept us all intact, kept us from going crazy.”

— Lou Reed

81. “When you think the night has seen your mind, That inside your twisted and unkind, Let me stand to show that you are blind. Please put down you hands cause I see you. I’ll be you mirror.”

— Lou Reed

82. “What could there be more purely bright in truth’s day star?”

— Lou Reed

83. “I shot a vein in my neck and coughed up a quaalude.”

— Lou Reed

84. “But I found tai chi when I was studying with Leung Shum, who teaches Eagle Claw and Wu Hao.”

— Lou Reed

85. “Caroline says as she gets up from the floor, you can hit me all you want to, but I don’t love you anymore.”

— Lou Reed

86. “When critics ask you if you feel vindicated by other critics – I didn’t like critics then, and I don’t like them now. There you go. I’ve always been outside the mainstream, and it stayed that way.”

— Lou Reed

87. “I’m an artist and that means I can be as egotistical as I want to be.”

— Lou Reed

88. “I tried to give up drugs by drinking.”

— Lou Reed

89. “Well all tai chi has the martial aspect to it, a lot of people don’t know, a lot of the teachers won’t show it, or they do show it but you don’t really learn it, what the application is.”

— Lou Reed

90. “First thing you learnis that you’vealways got to wait.”

— Lou Reed

91. “I’ll tell ya, I’m a genuinely nice guy. I really am. A real nice guy. But I think I’m temperamental.”

— Lou Reed

92. “These are really terribly rough times, and we really should try to be as nice to each other as possible.”

— Lou Reed

93. “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?”

— Lou Reed

94. “I’m tearing down Route 80 East, the sun’s on my right side. I’m drunk, but my vision’s good.”

— Lou Reed

95. “For a while, I felt a little self-impelled to write Lou Reed Kind of songs. I should have understood that a Lou Reed song was anything I wanted to write about.”

— Lou Reed

96. “I don’t think anybody is anybody else’s moral compass. Maybe listening to my music is not the best idea if you live a very constricted life. Or maybe it is.”

— Lou Reed

97. “I am bigger and stronger than ever. My Chen Taiji and health regimen has served me well all of these years, thanks to Master Ren Guang-yi. I look forward to being on stage performing, and writing more songs to connect with your hearts and spirits and the universe well into the future.”

— Lou Reed

98. “I don’t believe in dressing up reality. I don’t believe in using makeup to make things look smoother.”

— Lou Reed

99. “If it has more than three chords, it’s jazz.”

— Lou Reed

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

— Lou Reed