Iggy Pop Quotes

I'm a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm.

Music is life, and life is not a business.

DMT was a gaseous wax that you could smoke that gave you a 20-minute psychedelic high. You'd inhale it. And then when you'd exhale—poof, you'd be high. I saw Buddha, man. I know that sounds like no big deal. But I saw a gigantic holographic Buddha — correct in every way! Buddhas can be very intricate — these drawings that you see in books. Thousands of details were included in this Buddha. Where did they come from? I didn't make them up. I can't even draw, you know? I could barely spell cat, you know? And there it was. And I thought, Wow — the power of the mind, you know?

I stare at myself in the mirror and I think, 'Wow, I'm really great-looking.'... I think I'm the greatest, anyway.

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

And it's a - it's a term that's based on contempt; it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism, and, everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll.

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.

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

Nihilism is best done by professionals.

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

I'm glad I am crazy, it keeps me trying. I despise trendies, I know they're lying.

Bowie's a real man, and I'm a real woman - just like Catherine Deneuve.

I'm not ashamed to dress "like a woman" because I don't think it's shameful to be a woman.

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

I think that prosecuting some college kid because she shared a file is a lot like sending somebody to Australia 200 years ago for poaching his lordship's rabbit. That's how it must seem to poor people who just want to watch a crappy movie for free after they’ve been working themselves to death all day at Tesco or whatever, you know.

I like music that's more offensive. I like it to sound like nails on a blackboard, get me wild.

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

Cigarettes and coffee, man, that's a combination.

The future of rock n roll is Justin Bieber.

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.

I smoked this joint and then it hit me. I thought, what you gotta do is play your own simply blues.

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

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.

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

It is very important what not to do.

I never believed that U2 wanted to save the whales. I don't believe that The Beastie Boys are ready to lay it down for Tibet.

The more walking-around money I have, the less I walk around.

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

I became Iggy because I had a sadistic boss at a record store. I'd been in a band called the Iguanas. And when this boss wanted to embarrass and demean me, he'd say, 'Iggy, get me a coffee, light.'

If you give a good performance, something that gets some feeling across to people, that’s such a rare gift. It’s underestimated at this point in history, when the music biz is inevitably turning into a kind of politics.

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.

I kinda feel like everything comes full circle in life, even though that's a cliche.

If I started thinking too much about how influential I've been, then I'd be more of a turd than I already am.

I am the passenger, I stay under glass. I look through my window so bright, I see the stars come out tonight. I see the bright and hollow sky, over the city's ripped backsides and everything looks good tonight.

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

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.

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.

Curious is a good thing to be, it seems to pay some unexpected dividends.

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'll love you when my eyes are open, I'll love you when my eyes are gone.

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.

I'm not a singer, a walking instrument like Aretha Franklin. When you get an Iggy Pop record, you don't get "Iggy Sings." I am also a style of music, an approach.

I don't get my bliss by listening over and over to people in the street thinking, "Boy, is it that good?" Even though every time I hear it that's what I think. But I get it in human situations. There is this little voice that is going, "The reason you're able to enjoy your life now is that you made it in rock'n'roll and people are giving you free visas all over the place. Dude, you are being spoiled".

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

You know what I think you get scared of more - especially me, after touring for so long and being in bands for so long - you start to associate certain behavior with the music. It's like people associate having a cigarette with having a cup of coffee, or lunch.

I'm not the kind of person that likes to be dependent.

How am I going to listen to that horrible noise I make without a gram of coke and a couple of double Jack Daniels?

I always went in with a very specific idea of the sound I wanted, and once I'd recorded I'd try and make it sell as much as I could, but I only went in thinking of a sound I wanted. So, it's no surprise to me that he got the hit and I didn't. But what I realized was that he did dress it up nicely, and my god, he does sing on key well.

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