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.

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

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

I believe as human beings we are out of balance, out of synch with the earth.

But all the money in the world cannot make you happy either, so there has to be a balance.

In almost every country there are elements of opinion which would welcome such a conclusion because they wish to return to the politics of the balance of power, unrestricted and unregulated armaments, international anarchy, and preparation for war.

But if you can create an honorable livelihood, where you take your skills and use them and you earn a living from it, it gives you a sense of freedom and allows you to balance your life the way you want.

And Big Night, I think by the end the brothers find that balance, when they touch each other on the shoulder over breakfast and it's understood that what should never have driven them apart almost drove them apart. I think that's a true moment.

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

In 1844, there was a balance of perhaps of a couple of thousand dollars on the cr side.

You need a balance in life between dealing with what's going on inside and not being so absorbed in yourself that it takes over.

We believe, in fact, that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other - in balance with it... The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power.

You can't have too much of everything, you must have a balance, that's very important.

I've watched those shows my whole life - being on one is like a dream. It's hard to balance that dream with the fact that this is the Edie I've known my whole life.

Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat.

I think what I'm going to do is get more balance in my life to still be able to go out and play the hard rock 'n' roll and do what I like to do in music.

We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet. In my view we have nothing to show for it. We haven't invested in our roads, our bridges, our waste-water systems, our sewer systems. We haven't even maintained the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us.

I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.

It sounds extraordinary but it's a fact that balance sheets can make fascinating reading.

We're on the verge of a financial collapse unless we balance the budget, and that means some really, really tough decisions.