Iggy Pop Quotations

What did Christ really do? He hung out with hard-drinking fishermen.

My parents wanted to light my artistic candle. But over time, the definition of 'the arts' began to stretch. And as I got older, they suddenly realized, Oh, my God, we're the parents of Iggy Pop.

Something I like to do a lot is just sit by water when there’s a current and just stare into the water. I don’t fish, I don’t hunt, I don’t scuba, I don’t spear, don’t boat, don’t play basketball or football – I excel at staring into space. I’m really good at that.

When punk began to be a genre, people were going to go out and try to mine it. Some of the better groups, like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, were very artificial.

I stare at myself in the mirror and I think, 'Wow, I'm really great-looking.'... I think I'm the greatest, anyway.

'Punk rock' is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it.

Stages are getting higher and higher, and I'm getting older and older.

At university, I had been obsessed with reading about the lives of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and I was steeped in the crazy poets, and I came to view my early subjects through that prism.

Miami is nothing like me, and that's why I need to be here - it's the opposite. I'm practical, where this place is moody, I'm stolid in my interior, where this place has a certain flair, and I'm materialistic in a sense that this place is fundamentally spiritual - there's a quicksilver quality about this place.

Second only to the sea, the Miami sky has been the greatest comfort in my life past 50. On a good day, when the wind blows from the south, the light here is diffuse and forgiving.

The most successful stuff is sold to you as indispensable social information. The message in the music is, 'We are terribly, terribly slick and suave, and if you listen to us, you can probably get a leg up in society, too.'

Living in England was wonderfully civil and easy-going.

If you give a good performance, something that gets some feeling across to people, that’s such a rare gift. It’s underestimated at this point in history, when the music biz is inevitably turning into a kind of politics.

Basically, I’m a musical vocalist, but I do voiceover stuff as a sideline, like plumbing or something.

Well, I don't use the toilet much to pee in. I almost always pee in the yard or the garden, because I like to pee on my estate.

It's more fun to look at an old picture of me than it is to look at a new one sometimes. Although, I still wear a dress pretty well.

I was a pretty nice kid. Kind of quiet, but quiet in terms I wasn't going out and setting fire to anything. I had a big mouth and I was creative type, you know.

I have a hot memory, but I know I've forgotten many things, too, just squashed things in favor of survival.

I like music that's more offensive. I like it to sound like nails on a blackboard, get me wild.

I'm a little bit damaged in about 15 different ways, and it's been nice that no particular damaged area has become a major issue. I'm a more than moderately healthy 65-year-old male who has gotten away with a lot of stuff.

I never believed that U2 wanted to save the whales. I don't believe that The Beastie Boys are ready to lay it down for Tibet.

I find it hard to focus looking forward. So I look backward.

The more walking-around money I have, the less I walk around.

I became Iggy because I had a sadistic boss at a record store. I'd been in a band called the Iguanas. And when this boss wanted to embarrass and demean me, he'd say, 'Iggy, get me a coffee, light.'

I like semi-torn-down places where I could get nestled in and get something done without anyone bothering me.

She looked at me penetratingly. So I suppose you can figure out what happened next.

Studios are like hospitals. A lot of people check in, and they don't check out.

In 1965, when great young white artists in the English-speaking world were successfully re-channeling hillbilly and black music - you know Bob Dylan, Ray Davies, Pete Townsend, Keith Richards - they didn't get any money at first. They were all broke.

Look, you're here to see me, and I can't go on until my dealer is here, and he's waiting to be paid, so give me some money so I can fix up, and then you'll get your show.

My general take on American music since 1969 is that it's just getting stiffer and people are getting more uptight - audience, performance, and palace guard.

The people who were learning from me tended to be more commercial performers who were gonna rip off the salient idea to do it in a way that will sell, but they weren't going for the music.

When the 'godfather of punk' thing started floatin' around, it was, I was really, really embarrassed. I thought I should have a great, big rig and a cape and everything, and it was very embarrassing. And then after a while, you learn that if people call you anything, this is a great gift.

A lot of young musicians get the money at the wrong time. They get it for something they don’t feel great about, and it’ll make you feel so bad it’ll destroy you and kill you.

I try to beat back the producers and engineers so they - there's not an excess of stuff used to squeeze my voice to make it artificial. There's a person in there, and people will listen; if they hear another person speak to them, they'll listen because it's lonely out here.

Well, the stuff that has become more commercial doesn't have any edge.

Musical types tend to combine the burden of the author with the burden of the actor.

I have no idea why a guy would bring a jar of peanut butter to a concert.

It's fair to say that I have a side that is prudent and a side that is not.

What some people would call antics, I would just call a good show.

My mom was a saint. She taught me to be terminally nice.

I was who I was in high school in accordance with the rules of conduct for a normal person, like obeying your mom and dad. Then I got out of high school and moved out of the house, and I just started, for lack of a better term, running free.

Miami's not anybody's poor cousin. It's an aspiration to live in this town, not something you have to do to promote yourself like some of the larger cities.

I can't do it all myself. I'm not that kind of artist, I'm the kind of artist who works off other people best. It was like playing with Tinker toys or dominoes, trying to get all the pieces to fit like a jigsaw puzzle so I'd have a whole portrait but it would still have many facets.

Well, I've never had any sort of macho revulsion of fags, but Bowie and I - never, never, never, never.

I mean, the embarrassment quotient has been going down for a long time, and the fond amusement has been rising.

I'm really not good with the pickups. I'm a klutz and don't have a line of gab. I'm only good if they know who I am.

Music is life, and life is not a business.

I'm glad I am crazy, it keeps me trying. I despise trendies, I know they're lying.

I kinda feel like everything comes full circle in life, even though that's a cliche.

When it comes to art, money is an unimportant detail. It just happens to be a huge unimportant detail.

I'm a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm.

Bowie's a real man, and I'm a real woman - just like Catherine Deneuve.

I'm not the kind of person that likes to be dependent.

They say that death kills you, But death doesn't kill you. Boredom and indifference kill you.

Cigarettes and coffee, man, that's a combination.

I think that prosecuting some college kid because she shared a file is a lot like sending somebody to Australia 200 years ago for poaching his lordship's rabbit. That's how it must seem to poor people who just want to watch a crappy movie for free after they’ve been working themselves to death all day at Tesco or whatever, you know.

DMT was a gaseous wax that you could smoke that gave you a 20-minute psychedelic high. You'd inhale it. And then when you'd exhale—poof, you'd be high. I saw Buddha, man. I know that sounds like no big deal. But I saw a gigantic holographic Buddha — correct in every way! Buddhas can be very intricate — these drawings that you see in books. Thousands of details were included in this Buddha. Where did they come from? I didn't make them up. I can't even draw, you know? I could barely spell cat, you know? And there it was. And I thought, Wow — the power of the mind, you know?

I smoked this joint and then it hit me. I thought, what you gotta do is play your own simply blues.

The future of rock n roll is Justin Bieber.

I'm not ashamed to dress "like a woman" because I don't think it's shameful to be a woman.

It is very important what not to do.

I was feeling that I was the in the dead-end circuit from 1980 to 1983, and I didn't know what else to do. I remember doing a show in some college town, in a tiny club, and afterward some fans came back. I thought I had done good gig and they were going to tell me that.

If I started thinking too much about how influential I've been, then I'd be more of a turd than I already am.

I've probably been spit on more that any person alive outside of, I would say, a member of the prison system.

Punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it.

The 2 things I like the most are girls and loud noises.

Really good music isn't just to be heard, you know? It's almost like a hallucination

I'll love you when my eyes are open, I'll love you when my eyes are gone.

If I had to depend on what I actually get from sales, I'd be tending bar between sets,

Onstage I've been hit by a grapefruit, beercans, eggs, spit, money, cigarette butts, Mandies, Quaaludes, joints, bras, panties, and a fist.

You know what I think you get scared of more - especially me, after touring for so long and being in bands for so long - you start to associate certain behavior with the music. It's like people associate having a cigarette with having a cup of coffee, or lunch.

I'm not a singer, a walking instrument like Aretha Franklin. When you get an Iggy Pop record, you don't get "Iggy Sings." I am also a style of music, an approach.

Pussy power's pulling me down, down, down, down. When it's there and I can't have it, I get real real rabid.

I always went in with a very specific idea of the sound I wanted, and once I'd recorded I'd try and make it sell as much as I could, but I only went in thinking of a sound I wanted. So, it's no surprise to me that he got the hit and I didn't. But what I realized was that he did dress it up nicely, and my god, he does sing on key well.

What the world needs right now... a good, artistic, gothic, terrifying scare

Life is just a bag of pot.

Curious is a good thing to be, it seems to pay some unexpected dividends.

What do you do with a lifetime of work? Face it in the morning.

Your skin starts itching once you buy that gimmick about something called love.

I spent most of the eighties, most of my life, riding around in somebody else's car, in possession of, or ingested of, something illegal, on my way from something illegal to something illegal with many illegal things happening all around me

Sex may be a little more factual than love. You know whether it's good or bad. You know whether you liked it or not. You're not going to change your mind about it ten years later.

The nut of the thing is that if what you make is hard like a diamond, you can put it anywhere. You can put it up your and it will still be beautiful.

I'd have a few on and off, but the commitment was always more on the girls' part than on mine, to be perfectly honest. So, I met a girl in Tokyo, on my Japanese tour, with whom I've been living ever since, very happily. Her name is Suchi.

I don't think I'm lucky; I think I have a tough constitution. That's a lot of it. And I've been wise enough to listen to other people. I was unconsciously cultivating as many straight friends as I could.

I wanted to learn a little bit about acting, not because I thought I'd find a star vehicle and set the world on fire, but I thought the discipline of it would be good for me. I met a good coach, and I joined her class - with a lot of hungry young actors who really didn't acre if I was a rock 'n' roll singer or not. I started to learn to get a focus, without having to jump up and down every few seconds.

Miami is nothing like me, and thats why I need to be here - its the opposite. Im practical, where this place is moody, Im stolid in my interior, where this place has a certain flair, and Im materialistic in a sense that this place is fundamentally spiritual - theres a quicksilver quality about this place.

When I get up in the morning, I stay nude for three or four hours. If I really feel like getting formal, I'll put on board shorts.

There are no pimps, no whores, no transvestites - gone. Now that's more the culture I'm comfortable in ... I don't like it in the house, you know what I mean, but I like it somewhere around.

And it's a... it's a term 'Punk Rock' that's based on contempt; it's a term that's based on fashion , style , elitism, satanism , and, everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll.

Nobody understands me, I'm really sensitive.

The key to The Doors is the culture behind the myth.

I think that all the years of exposure to amps and electricity has altered my body chemistry.

As society has changed, what had formerly been unacceptable has become colourful.

How am I going to listen to that horrible noise I make without a gram of coke and a couple of double Jack Daniels?

I am the passenger, I stay under glass. I look through my window so bright, I see the stars come out tonight. I see the bright and hollow sky, over the city's ripped backsides and everything looks good tonight.

I'm bored, I'm the chairman of the board.

I'd come home from school alone with those teenage blues and I'd put on Frank Sinatra's It was a very good year. Here was this mature man singing about the cycle of his life, and as a kid I felt the emotions of it already. It has since been a touchstone for me whenever I want to experiment musically.

You know, I'm fifty-two now and I call myself a singer. Before I kick it I want to be able to carry a tune in a living room if called upon. Of course, mine come out all dark and twisted and weird.

I'm a travel enthusiast.

If I don't terrorize, I'm not Pop.