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

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.

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.

I'm a little bit damaged in about 15 different ways, and it's been nice that no particular damaged area has become a major issue. I'm a more than moderately healthy 65-year-old male who has gotten away with a lot of stuff.

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

At university, I had been obsessed with reading about the lives of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and I was steeped in the crazy poets, and I came to view my early subjects through that prism.