Laurie Anderson Quotes

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.

A lot of the work in United States is highly critical of technology. I’m using 15,000 watts of power and 18 different pieces of electronic equipment to say that.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The world is a strange and wonderful place.

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

I hate zoos.

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

Besides all those whaling details, Moby Dick is about someone who’s looking for something so huge, something they’ve wanted all their life, yet they know when they find it, it will kill them.

One of the things I learned from working on the Olympics was, the world does not need another big multimedia show.

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

I see and write things first as an artist, second as a woman, and third as a New Yorker. All three have built-in perspectives that aren’t neutral.

It’s just such a great miracle when things do work, and they work for such a wild variety of crazy reasons.

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

I think women are excellent social critics.

I’m a real workaholic.

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

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

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

It’s good to take a longer view and think, What would I really like to do if I had no limitations whatsoever?

I have written a few children‘s books. The first book that I wrote was for children. It was called ‘The Package‘, and it was a mystery story in pictures. It had no words.

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

I think artists who are attracted to working on the Net will adjust their work to the capabilities of a very small screen.

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

You can do great things with low-tech stuff.

Paradise is exactly like where you are right now… only much, much better.

You can do bigger and bigger things. For what?

The fewer expectations you have, the better.

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!

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.

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.

Something that has so much power must have life. Instruments have life.

A lot of words in English confuse the idea of life and electricity, like the word livewire.

I just sort of wish people would dance differently. It reminds me of teenage sex.

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 thing that’s characteristic of my performance is that I literally do drag the whole studio onto the stage.