Laurie Anderson Quotes

The main thing that attracts me to Buddhism is probably what attracts every artist to being an artist - that it's a godlike thing. You are the ultimate authority. There is no other ultimate authority.

I always wonder when people have any kind of spiritual and meditative practice especially if it's one designed in part to help them cope with things that seem unmanageable and to cope with something like death, if they're able to maintain that practice and maintain the equanimity at the time of death whether it's, you know, that person's or that person's loved one.

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.

The fewer expectations you have, the better.

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

I really trust audiences as having excellent taste, for the most part.

Art can be engaged in the world without being specifically politically engaged.

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'm a real workaholic.

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.

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?

Books are the way the dead talk to the living.

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.

I think illusion is one of the most interesting things that I've found to think about. Just look at yesterday, and what you were doing, and how important it was, and how nonexistent it is now! How dreamlike it is! Same thing with tomorrow. So where are we living?

I don't care about being famous or having a lot of people go, "She's really good."

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

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

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.

It's the tradition of American writers getting away in order to see the country - to get a better view.

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.

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

You need to try to master the ability to feel sad without actually being sad.

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.

The world is a strange and wonderful place.

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

What happens when you're in a crash is you join a crash club, and you talk endlessly about your crash because you don't want to bore your friends with it. And they've heard about the crash so many times.

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.

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

I kind of didn't believe the doctors when they came over and they said you're not going to be able to walk again. I'm sorry to tell you this. I thought who is this guy? I just was so impatient with the whole thing. I knew I was going to walk again. I knew that I was going to do that.

Art is about paying attention.

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 didn't really understand that Vipassana is a relatively new form of Buddhism that was based on the storage of pain. So the idea is that every time you don't scream, that's your Buddhist side.

Life goes by so fast. It's really - and a lot of times things happen so fast you don't know - how should I react.

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."

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.

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.

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.

Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us.

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

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!"

When love is gone, there's always justice.

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 wrote a letter to Thomas Pynchon asking, Can I have your permission to try to make an [adaptation] of your book? And I had no idea that he would answer me, because he's pretty elusive. But he did send a letter back that said, Yes, you can do that - as long as the only instrument in the opera is a banjo. I thought, That's an interesting way of saying No.

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.

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

History is an angel being blown backwards into the future

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.

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