Top 25 Lydia Lunch Quotes

I’m nihilistic, antagonistic, violent, horrible – but not obliterated, yet. I just refuse to be beaten down. I think it’s stubborness that keeps me going.

Part of the charm of what I do is the fact that it’s completely unrelated to everything that came before.

I’m separated by other performers with whom I might be lumped, since what I say is so intensely personal. I’m anti-art and anti-poetry. As much as possible, I want to inflict my personal pain on the rest of society.

I’m a very sympathetic person, but that doesn’t always come across in my work because I’m too busy being mad at everything.

Two of my favourite books are Henry Miller‘s ‘Tropic of Cancer‘ and ‘Tropic of Capricorn.’

If what I write is literature, I guess you‘d better emphasize the ‘litter.’

If people could understand how much pleasure they could have by themselves, I think everyone would be a lot saner. I think that people really need a dose of quality time with one’s self.

I would be humiliated if I found out that anything I did actually became a commercial success.

Sure you’re powerless, sure you’re just one person, sure you can’t change anything… but you don’t have to be miserable about it as well.

People have always asked me, ‘Haven‘t you wanted to sell out?’, and it’s like, who am I going to sell to?

Just because my bank account hasn’t swelled astronomically I don’t consider myself any less of a success.

The problem with music was always that the sound system often obliterated the words, and words, not music, have always been what I was about.

I’ve always been inspired by Genet, Henry Miller and Hubert Selby, Jr., who taught me that you’ve got to tell a bigger truth in whatever you’re doing, but the truth is not popular.

Honesty works against you in the entertainment field. I try to be a journalist and a documentarian, but that doesn’t mean that people are going to embrace it at the moment. The point is I’m leaving the mark of my hysteria and the political hysteria, and that’s it… I can only do what I do.

If someone says ‘grunge‘ or ‘punk,’ you know what the sound is, but if you say ‘No Wave,’ it’s kind of mysterious. That was the most interesting part and should have been the most inspirational thing about it… here’s this collective sonic insanity, and none of it sounds anything alike.

Part of what I have to represent is an alternative to this perverted fashion industry concept of what beauty is.

I am a humanist not a feminist. There’s a big difference.

I believe happiness is a chemical imbalance – it’s a silly thing to strife for. But satisfaction – if you seek satisfaction, you can succeed. Satisfaction is knowing that you’re doing the best that you can do; you’re living your life to the fullest.

You want positive, go elsewhere. Go find a different lie.

Living in Barcelona, I have my own little ghetto utopia. There are 3,000 ghost towns in Spain, and I’ve used the images of them a lot in my backdrops for my solo spoken-word stuff. The ghost towns could be from two buildings to 40 – things died out, or there were plagues, the roads don’t lead there, whatever.

I’m a total pleasure seeker. I pursue anything that satisfies me. I usually get it. I have specific needs and I know what they are so I can achieve satisfaction.

I’m like a one-woman protest machine.

I’m completely optimistic – I know the end is coming!

Politics are always involved, even in my love songs.

The American way of life, as I see it, is really the American way of death. Everything is determined by greed and the insatiable desire to be the richest and most powerful. And that desire is limitless.