Lydia Lunch Quotes

All of my favorite artists who inspired me were never afraid to be uncool and never afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves - no matter how much flak they took for it.

I tend to lose myself in the moment. I’m not very good at holding back. I don’t know how to do this without feeling everything. My emotions are the tool I use to perform.

Mad people = People who stand alone and burn. I'm attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.

Strangely, I feel that I become increasingly reclusive in my normal life and more open and candid in my music.

I use myself for each part. Naturally, it's my body, it's my soul, it's my feelings. That's the only way I know how to work. I couldn't pretend.

I write songs from the heart, and I don't hold back.

Even if we're not doing anything wrong, there are certain things we want to do that we don't think can withstand the scrutinizing eye of other people. And those are often the most important things that we do. The things we do when other people are watching are things that are conformist, obedient, normal, and unnotable.

Metal has its own code of cool, but it's not really trying to be cool. And that was very refreshing to me, that metal is very much about expressing something that seems awesome to you even if, at the time, much of the world was going to mock and reject it.

I'm really vulnerable onstage because it's just me. I'm not really trying to put up a front or act a certain way.

I think I've been incredibly raw my whole career. A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to look cool and spend time being guarded and putting up walls. I just never had the time. It seems more honest to say, 'Hey, this is who I am.'

I'm a big emotional mess. I try to talk about things that people don't like to talk about, especially in music. Hopefully it reaches someone and lets them access their vulnerability. That's what I want it to accomplish.

If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.

I've been getting in trouble my whole life and I really don't care what anybody thinks of what I do on stage as a comic.

If Rihanna stripped it all down morally rather than with her clothes, perhaps we'd get closer to Nina Simone. She's talented, but all we want is to sing the truth. If Britney Spears was to sing closer to her heart, she might have been the new Bobby Gentry or Dolly Parton.

I'm not afraid to write my feelings in songs.

My personal aesthetic is to be affected directly by everything about what you're seeing... I don't mind being dashed on the rocks... My most base act of defiance is to live a long time and still rock.

I'm a firm believer in putting your experiences in your writing, of bleeding into the page.

I'm not conventional. I try to be raw and vulnerable and gross.

When I talk about sad things, I talk about sad things.

To be a comic, you must reveal yourself in your most grotesque nudity. And it's only then, when the truth gets told, when the audience recognizes it somewhere in themselves, that they get that great medicine of laughter.

A lot of the work I've done has been about being very raw and open with your emotions.

I started to feel songwriting was pulling different pieces of my heart out - the more I started writing, the more there was honesty.

I just write about how I'm feeling at the time. If I feel like being cheeky and a bit straight up and a bit aggressive, you'll hear that in my music. If I feel like being very vulnerable and opening up about something personal, you'll hear that, too.

I never try and tune anything out. I think that's a mistake. You want to bring all the honest stuff that's going on inside you into your work. Otherwise, you're keeping a lot of authenticity out.

Most writers write from their own experiences. That is where the honesty and intensity of emotions come from.