138 Quotes by Michael Stipe

When I get really hammered I take my clothes off. That’s a sure sign. It’s been a long time since the last time I did that. Probably a year.

So, when you divide the world into music lovers, music fans and then those people who are just very casual about their music, it’s wallpaper to them, it’s elevator music, it’s just the thing that’s playing in the background that helps them through their day.

The punk-rock ethos was “Do it yourself. Anyone can do this. We’re not sent from the heavens.”

Super casual music listeners. That’s most of the people in the world. And you have to understand, that’s why Top 40 radio exists. It’s not there for people who seek out music and who love music.

I’ve always felt that sexuality is a really slippery thing. In this day and age, it tends to get categorized and labeled, and I think labels are for food. Canned food.

I’m not homosexual, I’m not hetrosexual, I’m just sexual.

By the time I was 18, I had absorbed punk rock from America, Britain, and the West Coast. All of it was so dark and weird and different and cool and hot and sexy and rebellious. It was a fist-in-the-air kind of rebellion that I wasn’t getting from the ’70s mainstream.

So, we went from being an Athens band to being a Georgia band to being a Southern band to being an American band from the East Coast to being an American band and now we’re kind of an international phenomenon.

Frankly I’m not great with heroin addicts. I tried heroin, but it was by accident. I’m not great with that level of substance abuse.