Quotes & Sayings About Sonic Youth

Those who committed atrocities always seemed to do so out of a misconceived sense of righteousness and the greater good. — Terry Brooks

[...] to overcome my own hypersensitivity, I had no choice but to turn fearless. — Kim Gordon

He sat down on a grassy bank and looked at the city that surrounded him, and thought, one day he would have to go home. And one day he would have to make a home to go back to. He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough. He pulled out his book. — Neil Gaiman

When people ask me what L.A. was like in the sixties, I tell them there wasn't as much terrible stucco as there is today: no mini malls with their approximation of Spanish two-story buildings, no oversized SUVs bulging out of parking-space lines. What used to say "Spanish-style" is now something diseased looking. Nobody seems to know how to stucco anymore. — Kim Gordon

I think that certainly, whenever you have a new band, the first record always has a certain energy to it before you know what you're doing. I think some of the early Sonic Youth stuff was maybe like that. — Kim Gordon

No power on earth can resist the lovers of liberty who are ready not to kill opponents, but be killed by them. — Mahatma Gandhi

As you grow up, and you'll find this, you keep getting involved with larger and larger illusions that take longer and longer to fall away. The great hope is eventually to find a delusion that will outlast your life. — Benjamin Kunkel

You can't take anything in life WAY too seriously ... Even the serious stuff! — Tanya Masse

We were like psychedelic folk combined with Sonic Youth's noise. — Daisy Berkowitz

When I die and go to hell, the devil is going to make me the marketing director for a cola company. I'll be in charge of trying to sell a product that no one needs, is identical to its competition, and can't be sold on its merits. I'd be competing head-on in the cola wars, on price, distribution, advertising, and promotion, which would indeed be hell for me. Remember, I'm the kid who couldn't play competitive games. I'd much rather design and sell products so good and unique that they have no competition. — Yvon Chouinard

I can appreciate that," says Henry. He's adding to the list. I look over his shoulder. Sex Pistols, the Clash, Gang of Four, Buzzcocks, Dead Kennedys, X, the Mekons, the Raincoats, the Dead Boys, New Order, the Smiths, Lora Logic, the Au Pairs, Big Black, Pil, the Pixies, the Breeders, Sonic Youth ...
Henry, they're not going to be able to get any of that up here." He nods, and jots the phone number and address for Vintage Vinyl at the bottom of the sheet. "You do have a record player, right?"
My parents have one," Bobby says. Henry winces.
What do you really like?" I ask Jodie. I feel as though she's fallen out of the conversation during the male bonding ritual Henry and Bobby are conducting.
Prince," she admits. Henry and I let out a big Whoo! And I start singing "1999" as loud as I can, and Henry jumps up and we're doing a bump and grind across the kitchen. Laura hears us and runs off to put the actual record on and just like that, it's a dance party. — Audrey Niffenegger

Keep track of your soul, Madison. Never compromise. Or you'll live the rest of your life regretting it--until it consumes you. — B.J. Kurtz

Sonic Youth, for better or worse, is/was a machine that carried me along through pregnancy, motherhood, and creative opportunities I never would have achieved on my own. I'm grateful and surprised that we were listened to, loved, ignored, and overrated. — Kim Gordon

We're historians and above all want to write about what was. Our book doesn't deal with legacies. It also wasn't our goal to destroy a legend. We consider Walesa to be a national symbol. He led Solidarity and remains an icon. But he also worked with the secret police under the name Bolek. The truth isn't always simply black and white. — Slawomir Cenckiewicz

There's only so many small shows you can do. A lot of the smaller things are more side project things. Not everything is appropriate for Sonic Youth to do. — Kim Gordon

I love black diamonds. They say your watch or jewelry wasn't cheap, but they aren't too flashy and in your face. — Justin Tuck

A fantastic Riot Boy, Trash the Senses..
-Thurston Moore — David Rat

The only crown Jesus ever wore on earth was a crown of thorns. — Elisabeth Elliot

Hardcore groups were singing songs about Ronald Reagan. I wasn't interested in this and preferred to sing about the darkness shimmering beneath the shiny quilt of American pop culture. I suppose you could say that Sonic Youth was always trying to defy people's expectations. — Kim Gordon

I've been trying to challenge myself to be more explicit. I've always liked punk rock and Sonic Youth. I make that music privately, but I've never released it. — Sufjan Stevens

In England, people had been loudly proclaiming the death of the guitar and the birth of the synthesizer, but Sonic Youth and other American guitar bands started to create a buzz. — Kim Gordon

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles. — Rivers Cuomo

Pearl Jam is a band I have a lot of respect for. Nirvana and Sonic Youth I feel the same way about. Mumford & Sons, My Morning Jacket, Wilco, Givers, and Foo Fighters are just some of my favorites. I respect bands that give me something of themselves that I can feel. ("Posing" bands turn me off generally speaking.) It all has to do with a feeling I have about them. That is what music is to me, a feeling. It's similar with people too. — Neil Young

Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties. — David Bowie

The first one hundred pages were fueled by early Misfits ("Where Eagles Dare [fast version]," "Horror Business," "Hybrid Moments") and Blanck Mass ("Dead Format"). David Bowie is in every book, and I always put on Purple Rain and Daydream Nation when I write the final pages; so thanks to him and Prince and Sonic Youth. — Colson Whitehead

I remember how the book talked about the pressure to please and be perfect that every woman falls into and then projects onto her daughter. Nothing is ever good enough. No woman can ever outrun what she has to do. No one can be all things - a mother, a good partner, a lover, as well as a competitor in the workplace. — Kim Gordon

I never really thought of myself as a musician. I'm not saying Sonic Youth was a conceptual-art project for me, but in a way, it was an extension of Warhol. Instead of making criticism about popular culture, as a lot of artists do, I worked within it to do something. — Kim Gordon

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. — Thurston Moore

A little holiday spirit lives forever in everyone. Test your own holiday spirit. Give away all of it you can. You'll see, it comes right back to you. — Ray Palla

I've been into Sonic Youth since junior high school. I think I kind of have ADD, so it's good music for ADD because it just throws you in different directions all the time. I really like Kim Gordon's voice and Thurston Moore's voice, and I like the guitars going off on tangents. — Norman Reedus

A very tall bearded guy was standing in a doorway, smoking a cigarette. "Hey", he said.
"Hi," I said. "Excuse me, do you rehearse here?"
"Yeah," he said, extending his hand and saying, almost formally, "Gibby Haynes. I'm in the Butthole Surfers."
I shook his hand. "Moby," I said. "I just moved upstairs."
"Are you an artist?"
"No, a musician."
"Oh, cool. Welcome to the building."
"Do you know who else has spaces here?" I asked.
"Well, there's us and Iggy and Sonic Youth and Helmet and Sean Lennon and the Beastie Boys and some other people," he said as someone behind him started making a wall of feedback. — Moby

I can't think about whether I'll disappoint Sonic Youth fans. It's not like I want people to be disappointed, but I just can't control that. — Kim Gordon

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. — Thurston Moore

I'm a little left of center, for sure, with Angels & Airwaves. But even when I get really weird, it's not that weird. It's not like some obscure Sonic Youth record or something. We don't take it quite that far. But what we do like are crescendos, and we do like when a song catches you off guard and it gives you the chills up and down your arms. — Tom DeLonge

I think everyone's experience with a terminal disease is so deeply personal and unique to the person, the context in which they're living and the relationships that they have. — Laura Linney