Michael Stipe Quotes

People are getting ready for music that makes them feel happy again rather than being depressed at the way the world is going right now.

I have a desire that I want to make people feel happy through my music. I'm always trying to find optimistic ways to express myself.

Happy music doesn't tend to move me much.

My whole mood or sense can change by virtue of the music that I'm listening to. It really does affect me on a visceral and emotional level.

Half the time I feel like I'm appealing to the downer freaks out there. We start to play one downer record after another until I begin to get down myself. Give me something from 1960 or something; let me get up again. The music of today is for downer freaks, and I'm an upper.

I've had more people in my life take their lives than... I think it's out of proportion with most people. I think a lot of them gravitate towards me because of the music.

I wish that people could understand that people need to laugh. They need to sing. They need to create their own joie de vivre.

Music has brought me a lot of emotional moments.

I believe that rock and roll can really make a huge impact on people's lives.

Here's a little song I wrote. You might want to sing it note for note. Don't worry, be happy.

I am by temperament an optimist, and I thought from the beginning that there was much to be written about suicide that was strangely heartening.

No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, or the Reatles' White Album?

Hear how the birds, on ev'ry blooming spray, With joyous musick wake the dawning day.

The readers who commited suicide after reading 'Werther' were not ideal but merely sentimental readers.

And when one person taps out a beat, while another leads into the melody, or when three people discover a harmony they never knew existed, or a crowd joins in on a chorus as though to raise the ceiling a few feet higher, then they also know there is hope for the world.

When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.

The song that nerves a nation's heart is in itself a deed.

You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is.

I can't relate to the idea of suicide. I guess I'm just one of those people that is always optimistic and upbeat. But one day, I sat down. I said 'You know what? Just to kind of purge myself, I want to see what its like to feel that low'. So I decided to write a suicide note. Yeah, just to kinda flush it out there and put it on a page. And I started to do this, and I had an epiphany. I'll share this with you: a suicide note that is written by somebody that is not suicidal is called an autobiography. I am on Chapter 58.

I think love could have saved Kurt Cobain.

I'm not a sad old hippie - I'm a joyous old hippie.

I knew [Kurt Cobain] and his daughter. And Courtney [Love] came and stayed at my house. R.E.M. worked on two records in Seattle and Peter Buck lived next door to Kurt and Courtney. So we all knew each other. I reached out to him with that project as an attempt to prevent what was going to happen.

I think that music has been a great help to me and this has been confirmed by every psychiatrist I have seen. I would probably be dead if not for music.

If you believe suicide will bring you peace, or at the very least just an end to everything you hate- you are displaying self-caring behavior. You are still able to actively seek solutions to your problems. You are willing to go to great lengths to provide what you believe will be soothing to yourself. This strikes me as optimistic.