Lester Bangs Quotes

I have fervently been on both sides of that question at different times.

As much as I love boxing, I hate it. And as much as I hate it, I love it.

I hate, and yet must love the thing I hate.

The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him.

When I'm doing a drama, I wish I was doing something funny. When I'm doing something funny, I wish I was doing something more serious. I think it's just human nature.

I both love and do not love; and am mad and not mad.

The best ideas make you want to say 'yes' and 'no' in the same breath.

There is nothing in the world more pitiable than an irresolute man, oscillating between two feelings, who would willingly unite the two and who does not perceive that nothing can unite them

i like to think that im helping them by hating them

Modern science knows much about such conflicts. We call the mental state that engenders it "ambivalence": a collision between thought and feeling.

I love you. And I want you, too. But. However. Unfortunately...

two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, and each will wrestle for the mastery there.

There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.

The tension of opposites: Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.

There are always two forces warring against each other within us.

I am a person whose father had no religion but who went to the nuns for a couple of years. And I think I'm the same: On one hand, I pray; on the other hand, I don't believe. I am constantly between the two.

I have a love/hate relationship with just about everything, but certainly with America.

Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

Men are as we have always known them, neither better nor worse from the hearts of rogues there springs a latent honesty, from the depths of honest men there emerges a brutish appetite - a thirst for extermination, a desire for blood.

Seeing my malevolent face in the mirror, my benevolent soul shrinks back.

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.

When you are in deep conflict about something, sometimes the most trivial thing can tip the scales.

It's not like you make a decision and everything inside you is 100 percent happy.

I like to not care that much about criticism, but I do care about it.

As an actor, there's a bit of you that's decided you want to be looked at and watched, but there's a paradoxical bit that wants to run away.