68 Quotes by Lydia Lunch

I just prefer instrumental. I don't need to hear what other people are singing. And if I need music as a backdrop to work or to think, I need to have that part of the brain clear - I don't need people feeding their fantasies into my vision.

To be in a band, at least according to the rules of rock in the 1970s, one must know how to play an instrument. But rather than waste time solving that problem, No Wavers ignored it. The point was simply to make music, not to learn how first.

I watch the news. It fuels my rage; it informs my work.

Part of what I have to represent is an alternative to this perverted fashion industry concept of what beauty is.

Part of the charm of what I do is the fact that it's completely unrelated to everything that came before.

Living in Barcelona, I have my own little ghetto utopia. There are 3,000 ghost towns in Spain, and I've used the images of them a lot in my backdrops for my solo spoken-word stuff. The ghost towns could be from two buildings to 40 - things died out, or there were plagues, the roads don't lead there, whatever.

I'm separated by other performers with whom I might be lumped, since what I say is so intensely personal. I'm anti-art and anti-poetry. As much as possible, I want to inflict my personal pain on the rest of society.

Two of my favourite books are Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer' and 'Tropic of Capricorn.'

I've always been inspired by Genet, Henry Miller and Hubert Selby, Jr., who taught me that you've got to tell a bigger truth in whatever you're doing, but the truth is not popular.