Ian MacKaye Quotes

When I started on MySpace, people wanted to support me, but once I rose to fame with the MTV show, they felt like I had abandoned them for some reason, that I was too famous to talk to them anymore.

I never like it when a celebrity goes on Twitter and says, 'This isn't true!' It is what it is; I tend not to do that.

I believe in wishing my colleagues and other celebs in a manner that brings my wit out and gives people a talking point. But there are people who love and those who hate you. That's part of a celeb's life.

The mere suggestion of fame and fortune casts a glamour all its own. It is rather alarming how quickly people will turn someone else's fiction into fact in order to support their own fictions of themselves.

I think that most great artists who are extremely known, as I am, would intimidate a lot of people. I don't want to do that to people, but I know I do.

When you start searching for your name, you might be thrilled with what a lot of people say and it just takes one person. And it can hurt your feelings, but I have been aware of the fan bases and stuff like that and realize how deeply involved they are.

Now people are celebrated for being obsessive.

What must that be like? To be admired before you’ve even said a word, to be desired two or three hundred times a day by people who have absolutely no idea what you’re like?

I never thought to look at the New York Times one, even though I knew people were pissed off. I've seen YouTube videos from people who are pissed off at me about that and that takes a lot of effort to go find.

People still tweet me like, "Oh my god, I just found out you guys are married!" Which makes sense to me because I'm not the type of person who is like, "I love this actor, let me find out everything about their lives."

People do not like to have their favorite myths of idols challenged and as a rule I think that the public does not like bad news.

You really can't function as a celebrity. Entertainers are celebrities. I'm an architect. I'm an artist. I make things.

You know what kills me about Jennifer Lopez? The fact that this woman wakes up one day and she's like, 'You know what? From now on, I'd like people to call me J-Lo,' and then they do it. Only a celebrity can get away with this. George Bush doesn't come out for his morning press conferences: 'From now on, I'd like to be referred to as G-Bu. Y'all know my vice president, Dog Chain.

You can do anything when you're famous. That's why famous people are so dumb.

I really do believe that there are those who would like and trust me better if they saw me weeping into a whisky, making a fool of myself, getting aggressive, maudlin and drunkenly out of control. I have never found those states in others anything other than tiring, awkward, embarrassing and fantastically dull, but I am quite sure that people would cherish a view of me in that condition at least once in a while.

I talked to George Lucas once, not about Star Wars. Everyone wants to talk to him about Star Wars, and I didn't want to be one of those people. In person - at least on this occasion - he wasn't effervescent and giddy, as the Star Wars movies are. He's more focused.

I kind of think that artists throughout history, poets throughout history have been criticized for sharing what's on people's minds and I don't think it's any different now.

It stirs up envy, fame does. People feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you - and it won't hurt your feelings - like it's happening to your clothing.

My esteem in this country has gone up substantially. It is very nice now when people wave at me, they use all their fingers.

In the U.S., African- Americans, no matter what we do - when we sit in, when we freedom ride, when we kneel in, whatever it is, the initial response from the public tends to be overwhelmingly negative, because basically we're kind of raining on folks' parades. As time goes on, the Muhammad Ali's and all the people that raised those issues, they then become heroes later when people reflect on the courage they showed and the issues that they raised. And Donald Trump is in danger of being a more and more reviled figure as the years go on.

When you're a writer and you're a producer, traditionally the junkets are really focused on the beautiful people and nobody wants to talk to you.

We're interested by public personas and private personas, otherwise we wouldn't put on with actors rambling on with the same kind of stuff, over and over again, saying variations of the same thing. I'm always amazed by how fascinated people still are by actors because it's the same version of events that actors describe, all the time.

There are so many famous people now that are not really gifted or talented at doing anything other than getting made up, putting on tight dresses, acting badly, getting married. I mean, what the hell? I don't know where we are going with this here in America. And we are setting a tone for the world, because everyone looks at what we do.

I do feel like a fraud a lot of the time because I've never been interested in people who say 'I'm a writer', 'I'm an artist'. Too much is made of the role and not enough of the work. We are such a celebrity-driven age and a status-driven age, that the status becomes more important than the actual work.

Young people are tremendously frustrated because they don't see politics as changing anything. They see it as perpetuating a system that frankly doesn't work and no matter who you vote for things don't really change. Social media is where I think a bold message will wake them up. We saw that a little bit in the Occupy movement. Over the next three years, I think young people are going to wake up and be empowered.