Top 180 Lou Reed Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “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

102. “I dreamed that I was young and smart, and it was not a waste. I dreamed that there was a point of life, and to the human race.”

— Lou Reed

103. “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

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

— Lou Reed

105. “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

106. “An eye for an eye is elemental.”

— Lou Reed

107. “I’d harbored hopes that the intelligence that once inhabited novels or films would ingest rock. I was, perhaps, wrong.”

— Lou Reed

108. “As the dead rise to live, the live sink to die, the currents are deep and raging inside.”

— Lou Reed

109. “The gay people know where I’m at. Straight people may not know where I’m at, but they find it kind of interesting when they show up and see what is sitting around them.”

— Lou Reed

110. “I wish I had a talking book that told me how to act and look, a talking book that contained keys to past and present memories.”

— Lou Reed

111. “I wouldn’t want to hear Beethoven without beautiful bass, the cellos, the tuba. It’s very important. Hip-hop has thunderous bass. And so does Beethoven. If you don’t have the bass, it’s like being amputated. It’s like you have no legs.”

— Lou Reed

112. “Any human being should have a tolerance for anybody.”

— Lou Reed

113. “I’m still not sure I didn’t die.”

— Lou Reed

114. “All the people have gone to war leaving no interrogator to mind.”

— Lou Reed

115. “I don’t think anybody is anybody else’s moral compass.”

— Lou Reed

116. “You can’t ask me to explain the lyrics because I won’t do it.”

— Lou Reed

117. “You won’t see my parents honored on any stamps.”

— Lou Reed

118. “With Master Ren, if I’d tell him I can’t do that and he’d say, yes you can, and it turns out I very much can do it.”

— Lou Reed

119. “I write whatever shows up. That’s good enough for me. I’m part of the first generation that wants to still do original material and not tour around as an oldies act.”

— Lou Reed

120. “I think it’s pretentious to create art just for the sake of stroking the artists ego.”

— Lou Reed

121. “I can concentrate on my art.”

— Lou Reed

122. “I never liked the Beatles. I thought they were garbage.”

— Lou Reed

123. “Meditation doesn’t have to be complicated. What I do is about as simple as you can get. You could just count the beads, one, two, three, with your eyes closed or open, whatever makes you happy.”

— Lou Reed

124. “I can’t tell the difference between wrong and right, are you laughing at me?”

— Lou Reed

125. “I’ve become completely well adjusted to being a cult figure.”

— Lou Reed

126. “Music is an amazing thing. I don’t know if we really think about it the same way we consider a painting an amazing thing. I mean, a painting is, in quotes, imaginary. There is nothing on the canvas when you start; and writing a song, there is nothing there when you start.”

— Lou Reed

127. “I wanted to be an actor. That was my real goal. But I wasn’t any good at it, so I wrote my own material and acted through that. That’s my idea of fun. I get to be all these things in the songs.”

— Lou Reed

128. “It’s fun to be in a small club and to be able to look somebody right in the eye and watch them just freak. Then it’s fun to be in front of thousands of people and watch a couple of hundred freaking out of their minds.”

— Lou Reed

129. “Writhe and sway to music’s pain searing with asides, caress death with a lover’s touch for it shall be your bride.”

— Lou Reed

130. “My attitude is that you very rarely come in contact with someone of Master Ren’s level, so every opportunity I could get to learn from him I wanted to do that.”

— Lou Reed

131. “The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.”

— Lou Reed

132. “Some even claim that I’m a terror, a dictator and they’re right.”

— Lou Reed

133. “Some people drink to unleash their libidos, and other people drink to prop up their egos.”

— Lou Reed

134. “Well, everybody does something, some people race cars, others collect stamps, I find tai chi to be philosophically, aesthetically, physically and spiritually fascinating.”

— Lou Reed

135. “But I’m also talented and I know when I created something great and Perfect Night is something great, no doubt, no but.”

— Lou Reed

136. “Jealousy endlessly eats through my mind, and jealously endlessly makes me be unkind.”

— Lou Reed

137. “I have no control over the audience. I have no idea what they think. My heart’s pure. I can’t do anything. I really can’t do anything. I don’t know what goes on in the crowd.”

— Lou Reed

138. “I don’t really think about what the subject of my next album will be. I just know that I’m going to make another album.”

— Lou Reed

139. “I always thought martial arts was the most modern choreography we could have right now, and I always wanted to put it to music.”

— Lou Reed

140. “I don’t think I’m in any position to call myself a martial artist. I’m a student of the martial arts.”

— Lou Reed

141. “I’ve gone out with my shotgun. This is hunting country out there. You better run.”

— Lou Reed

142. “I’ve never been super confident about anything. The work is never as good as it could be.”

— Lou Reed

143. “What I really love is my scotch. It’s the power, the power of positive drinking.”

— Lou Reed

144. “Over what guilty spirit to not hear the beating, to not hear the beating, but only tears of perfect moan, only tears of perfect moan.”

— Lou Reed

145. “Psychologically, it’s better that I think that I’m dirt.”

— Lou Reed

146. “There were lots of things that I recognized from my experience with Eagle Claw and Wu Hao, and here was the combination of the whole kit and kaboodle, the whole tamale in one.”

— Lou Reed

147. “When he beat my mother it made me so mad.”

— Lou Reed

148. “I don’t know anyone actually who does care what a critic says.”

— Lou Reed

149. “Kill them now, cause I need some kicks. I need some kicks, I’m getting bored.”

— Lou Reed

150. “It’s depressing when you’re still around and your albums are out of print.”

— Lou Reed