Laurie Anderson Quotes

Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.

The world is a strange and wonderful place.

Paradise Is exactly like Where you are right now Only much much Better.

Art is about paying attention.

History is an angel being blown backwards into the future

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.

When you meet a man who is broken, pick him up and carry him. When you meet a woman who’s broken, put her all into your arms. Cause we don’t know where we come from … we don’t know where we are.

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 believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.

If I'm confused, I just spend some time looking at the sky and falling into it. It's not a meditation that anyone taught me, it's something I've done my whole life, and liked doing, and it made me feel like nothing.

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

Technology today is the campfire around which we tell our stories. There's this attraction to light and to this kind of power, which is both warm and destructive. We're especially drawn to the power. Many of the images of technology are about making us more powerful, extending what we can do. Unfortunately, 95 percent of this is hype, because I think we're powerful without it.

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

I'm a real workaholic.

If you're a young artist, wondering what to call yourself, consider 'multimedia artist.' It's so vague. Then, no one can say, 'Hey, how come you're a jazz person, and you're making a pop opera?

Literature is the safe and traditional vehicle through which we learn about the world and pass on values from on generation to the next. Books save lives.

The fewer expectations you have, the better.

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!"

You can do great things with low-tech stuff.

You know the reason I love the stars is because we can't hurt them: we can't burn them, we can't melt them , we can't make them overflow, we can't flood them or burn them up—so we keep reacing for them

Freedon is a scary thing. Most people don't want it.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Don't be afraid of anyone. Imagine your life if you're not afraid of anyone.

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.

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

I always feel like if someone has stage fright, I really try and say, "Listen, these people want you to succeed, they want to have a good evening. They want to see something really great. They don't want to see something crappy. They don't. They want to be at something really special."

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.

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.

If there are bases on the moon, that would be the end of the moon as we know it.

Some friends of mine work in an office. They were getting really nervous from their coffee breaks, so they started to have wig breaks. They tried on wigs for 15 minutes. They found this relaxing. So that's Wig Therapy.

All of nature talks to me - if I could just figure out what it's saying - trees are swinging in the breeze. They're talking to me. Insects are rubbing their legs together. They're all talking. They're talking to me.

You know, for every dollar a man makes a woman makes 63 cents. Now, fifty years ago that was 62 cents. So, with that kind of luck, it’ll be the year 3,888 before we make a buck.

Computers are so deeply stupid. What bother me most when they talk about technology is they don't realize how much more exciting their minds are. That machine is stupid. And boring. It does just a few things and then it'll crash. People think, 'I am on the Net, I am in touch with the world'. Wrong! The point is how we work, not how machines work.

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

I'm an average enough person to point to the things I've gotten to see that are awe-inspiring.

Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something.

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

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.

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

The audience creates its own personality, I've noticed, in the first five minutes. They will either be generous, funny, silly, withholding, academic, analytical, grudging. And I'm fascinated with how that gets constructed, because it happens right away.

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.

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

I think women are excellent social critics.

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!

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.