I have to reign myself in a lot.

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.

It's hard for bands to stick it out because people grow up, and it never really pays off. If you're looking for some sort of payoff, it's not gonna happen.

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.

I grew up in the early '70s in New England.

It's American Alternative radio stations that bug me. We're considered Alternative, but don't expect us to be played next to Blink 182 and Offspring. We're hardly of that generation.

I was surrounded by nature and trying to come to terms with this blissful nature versus the inhumane mentality of war. People were being deluded by someone using the word peace.

We're like old people now playing music. I'm so glad we stuck it out because it's a lot better. I used to feel kind of anxious. Now our apprenticeship is over.

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

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

Anyone who grows up with parents who are very influential, there are cases where people run away from that if they have parents who are really lame.

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

We're all very sensitive that Jim has the shortest history with the band. He wants to be somewhat of a free agent. I'm just going to let time dictate how Jim's future evolves.

Rock'n'roll saved my soul.

I have to reign myself in a lot.

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.

Kids think of us as being totally over the hill.

Most people can't tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can't be related to other forms of historical poetry.

I really want to do a book on the history of the no-wave music scene in New York, how it extended out and formed lots of other things. It was such a great visual culture.

Traditional songwriting, to us, is where the experimental nature comes in. We're all involved with so much outside activity with really hardcore, experimental music-making.

I don't really care about, Oh I really have to sell these things.

We never notate our music, so you can try to replicate it, but you don't really have it.

A lot of the lyrical ideas do have a lot of meaning in a way, although it is somewhat abstracted.

The band has a liberal philosophy - that's sort of a given.

I wanted to hear the songs in the way that I had written them, which was very basic. All I wanted was drums and another guitar, and I was just going to sing.

No one really gets rich doing this. A couple people do, Black Sabbath does. We don't sell any records anymore.

We're playing all these weird festivals, usually outdoors.

Whenever I can afford to do something, I do it.

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.

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

Noise has taken the place of punk rock. People who play noise have no real aspirations to being part of the mainstream culture. Punk has been co-opted, and this subterranean noise music and the avant-garde folk scene have replaced it

Good things happen when you meet strangers.

The first time I ever saw a black audience at our concert, we were in Zimbabwe.

Any time women come together with a collective intention, it's a powerful thing. Whether it's sitting down making a quilt, in a kitchen preparing a meal, in a club reading the same book, or around the table playing cards, or planning a birthday party, when women come together with a collective intention, magic happens.

A cup of gourmet coffee shared with a friend is happiness tasted and time well spent.

I got into sports, thankfully, because I didn't listen to my mother.

High school for me was not all that fun. I think it's a lot more fun after when you realize that high school ends, and everything that's important at that time is sort of not important if people don't like your jeans or whatever. It doesn't matter.

These are hallowed moments, when every American has reason to express his gratitude to Almighty God that it has been our good fortune to witness the light of this auspicious morn.

If you start with a great peach, there's nothing you're ever going to do that's going to make it any better than when it comes off the tree. In 1970, that was a revolution.

For a football coach theres nothing that matches the pain of a team not playing up to its capabilities.

I've come to learn that the choices I labor over and go back and forth about and ask a million people for their opinions and make lists about... those are always the wrong choices.

Have you ever been in love Horrible isnt it It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.

For me, if 'Maryland' became half of what 'Searchin' My Soul' became, as far as radio play goes, I would be thrilled.

Only girls with long hair will understand the nervous feeling when you're near someone with scissors.

I vigorously deny hitting Ms. Sheridan.

Readers will stay with an author, no matter what the variations in style and genre, as long as they get that sense of story, of character, of empathetic involvement.

In the tradition of national income accounting, economic policymakers have typically focused on variables such as income, wealth, and consumption.

To be a police officer in New York requires so much more than just we, as a citizen, need to walk around. Your job is to put yourself in this place where a horrible event has happened and try to figure it out. That's what you do, day in and day out. You have to have a certain distance to it. You can't let yourself go too far into it.

The world is divided up into two kinds of people - those who look at their body waste in the toilet bowl, and those who don't.