Lou Reed Quotes

The ups and downs, the problems and stress, along with all the happiness, have given me optimism and hope because I am living proof of survival.

When I planted my pain in the field of patience it bore fruit of happiness.

I have fallen a few times, and each time, I have gotten up and grown as a person and looked at things a little differently.

We can live tough lives, but the human spirit is stronger, seemingly, than anything. There is redemption, hope, and love. All different forms of heartbreak, but beyond all that there is hope, there is love. There is beauty and bliss.

Learn from this, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Hell does have an exit, and I found it. For those who are still looking for a way out, I left the door open and I'll be waiting for whoever wants to grow with me.

I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book

I feel like I came through this year stronger and wiser, and I can go into 2015 in a much better place.

We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken.

Joy came always after pain.

Even in the worst time of life, if you are still breathing, that means you are still alive. If you are still here, you haven't accomplished what is still to be accomplished. The most important part of your life is still ahead of you.

It is important for people to know that no matter what lies in their past, they can overcome the dark side and press on the a brighter world.

What once seemed such a curse has become a blessing. All the agony that threatened to destroy my life now seems like the fertile ground for greater trust, stronger hope, and deeper love.

Don't close the book when bad things happen in your life! Just turn the page and start a new chapter!

...We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That sounds goody two-shoes, I know, but I believe that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and time. Less time is crystal. Less than that is coal. Less than that is fossilized leaves. Less than that it's just plain dirt. In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be.

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.\

No matter how painful your past has been, you have made it through.

my life has been saved over and over again by picking up a book in which someone captured the whole experience of being despised and not dying.

I hope that people take away hope, maybe not in an obvious sense, but in the form of hearing somebody who's genuinely fighting to stay above water. And in that fight, there's hope. In that fight, maybe there's positivity.

The living can't quit living because the world has turned terrible and people they love and need are killed. They can't because they don't. The light that shines into darkness and never goes out calls them on into life. It calls them back again into the great room. It calls them into their bodies and into the world, into whatever the world will require. It calls them into work and pleasure, goodness and beauty, and the company of other loved ones.

All of us heal in time. The strongest are born again. We only keep the scars we choose to keep.

Life's funny. You have to find a way to keep going, to keep laughing, even after you realize that none of your dreams will come true. When you realize that, there's still so much of a life to get through.

No matter where we live on the planet or how difficult our situation seems to be, we have the ability to overcome and transcend our circumstances.

The film [Dream of Life], in the end, is life-affirming, and I think it's always useful for people to be reminded that no matter how rough things get, no matter what kind of twists and turns our lives can take, we can keep going, we can create something new.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art.

To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.