So lots of respect for all you boys and girls out there who tab out songs like all the time. You bring rock and roll music closer to the people. Gratefully yours

Each member does whatever they want with the song and it totally changes it from whatever idea I hear around it. It turns it into a Sonic Youth song and completely away from it being a solo song.

Lyric writing is an interesting process in Sonic Youth. There's three people writing now, and we've all had a lot of interest and involvement with expression through words

Buddhism has become a socially recognized religious philosophy for Americans, whereas it used to be considered an exotic religion.

I certainly don't sit around in the morning making pancakes listening to Whitehouse or anything.

I never go back and listen to the recorded document. The thrill comes when the balance can be attained. Everyone in the room can have a shared, communal rock experience.

Rock'n'roll saved my soul.

Every now and again, the alternative culture is cherished by the mainstream for what it is, rather than how it should be, like the mainstream popular music.

I have to reign myself in a lot.

Hits are for squares.

I never do releases to try and make or break some contemporary band.

If I thought that what I'm doing when I write is expressing myself, I'd junk the typewriter. Writing is a much more complicated activity that that.

I don't care how small or big they are, insects freak me out.

Life is a wretched gray Saturday, but it has to be lived through.

I wouldn't be satisfied with a life lived solely on the barricades. I reserve my right to be frivolous.

With media, it's never bad-to-good. It's always just moving from different to different. Faster, more stuff, but there's always good, more good, and more bad.

Be saving, but not at the cost of all liberality. Have the soul of a king and the hand of a wise economist.

Never point at anything beige and call it cool.

Everything moves, and everything moves to a rhythm. And everything that moves to a rhythm creates a sound. At this moment, the same thing is happening here and everywhere else in the world.

Celebrities are nowhere as rich as some people think they are.

Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.