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Home
Authors
Laurie Anderson
American
Musician
About the author
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Words
#Art
#Performance
#Joy
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#People
#End
#Word
#Beginning
#Regret
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#People
#Wonder
#Suffering
#Despair
#Corporate
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Right
#Now
#Paradise
One of the things I learned from working on the Olympics was, the world does not need another big multimedia show.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#World
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Work
#Questions
#Trying
#Car
#Fashion
#Company
My job is to make images and leave the decision-making and conclusion-drawing to other people.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#People
#Job
#Decision
It's just such a great miracle when things do work, and they work for such a wild variety of crazy reasons.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Work
#Variety
Something that has so much power must have life. Instruments have life.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Life
#Power
The thing that's characteristic of my performance is that I literally do drag the whole studio onto the stage.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Performance
My secret dream is to write an epic poem. That's probably the most pretentious thing I've said.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Dream
The fewer expectations you have, the better.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Expectations
I hate zoos.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Hate
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Talk
#Hate
The problem with prototypes is they don't always work.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Work
You can do great things with low-tech stuff.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Architecture
#Writing
#Dancing
#Music
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Want
#Art
#Thinking
#Writers
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Will
#Reality
The world is a strange and wonderful place.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#World
It's good to take a longer view and think, What would I really like to do if I had no limitations whatsoever?
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Limitations
You can do bigger and bigger things. For what?
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
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!
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Love
#Justice
#Force
#Mom
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Work
#Technology
#Power
#states
#United
If there are bases on the moon, that would be the end of the moon as we know it.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#End
#Moon
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Life
#Will
I don't take compliments so well. I always hang my head and shuffle and kind of try to immediately forget.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Forget
#Compliments
At the School of Visual Arts in New York, you can get your degree in Net art, which is really a fantastic way of thinking of theater in new ways.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Art
#Thinking
#School
#Theater
As an artist I'd choose the thing that's beautiful more than the one that's true.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Artist
A lot of words in English confuse the idea of life and electricity, like the word livewire.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Life
#Words
#Idea
#English
#Word
#Electricity
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Style
#Artists
#Production
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Words
#Children
#First
#Books
#Mystery
I have written a lot about snakes. There's something pretty primordial about it.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Pretty
I just sort of wish people would dance differently. It reminds me of teenage sex.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Dance
#People
#Sex
#Teenage
I'm not usually where I think I am. It's kind of spooky.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Art
#Money
As a New Yorker, I'm someone who lives on an island and looks across to America.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#America
I've been trying to avoid goal-oriented behavior.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Trying
#Goal
#Behavior
I really like books that you can kind of hear as much as think about, that are so graphic and visual.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Books
I'm an average enough person to point to the things I've gotten to see that are awe-inspiring.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
I'm a real workaholic.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
I think women are excellent social critics.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Women
I think artists who are attracted to working on the Net will adjust their work to the capabilities of a very small screen.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Work
#Will
#Artists
I think a lot of people in Washington are extremely suspicious of NASA.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#People
#Washington
I so much appreciate it when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist - I'm happy to see the work.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#Work
#Artist
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.
Laurie Anderson,
American
Musician
#First
#Woman
#Artist