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

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

A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end.

The due process of law as we use it, I believe, rests squarely on the liberal idea of conflict and resolution.

Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.

Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the Labour Party's gone.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

A dog is like a liberal. He wants to please everybody. A cat really doesn't need to know that everybody loves him.

Habituated from our Infancy to trample upon the Rights of Human Nature, every generous, every liberal Sentiment, if not extinguished, is enfeebled in our Minds.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

This liberal progressive agenda... is the antithesis of who we are as a constitutional republic.

Amherst is a liberal arts college, committed to providing students with a broad education.

The Senate needs 60 votes to pass anything. They have to compromise with liberal Democrats to spend more money. Even though arguably we have control of the Senate, we really don't.

A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.

As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.

Note too that a faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character and permits it not to be cruel.

Lord Chamberlain's readers or controllers, which were a handful of people working directly to him, were a very assorted group of people and some of them tried very hard to be as liberal as they could.

If a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested.

I've always been a liberal and I've always had strong socialist leanings.