"The world has changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history."

"I needn't mention how essential dreaming is to the character of the rock star."

"Free your heart from guilt and shame..."

"It doesn't really matter what a man does with his life. All that really matters in the end is the legend that grows up around him."

"He became someone else. Then again, he always was."

"The secret of becoming a star is knowing how to behave like one."

"And they tell you it's not natural."

"The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second duty is, no one has yet found out."

More quotes.


"Histories, like ancient ruins, are the fictions of empires."

"…everything forgotten hangs in dark dreams of the past, ever threatening to return…"

"'Meaning is not in things but in between them'
-Norman Brown"

"I knew I should create a sensation, gasped the Rocket, and he went out."

"Ten years and the world had changed so completely that the life I led in England seemed like someone else's life. Someone else's story. Anyone's but mine."

"The doctors guaranteed the treatment would fry the fairy clean out of him. But all it did was make him bonkers every time he heard electric guitar."

"…when you're abused like that… you know you've touched the stars."

"And on winding roads, in crowded clubs and hotel bars- this shipwreck of the streets stirred the daydreams of London trash and glamour, his cigarette tracing a ladder to the stars."

"Times, places, people. They're all speeding up. So to cope with this evolutionary paranoia strange people are chosen who through their art can move progress more quickly."

"Make a wish and see yourself, on-stage, inside out! A tangle of garlands in your hair. Of course you are pleasantly surprised."

"Softly, he said, I will mangle your mind."

"He called it a freedom. A freedom you can allow yourself. Or not."

"Curt: I don't know. No, it got too big, I guess. It got too schizoid, you know? I mean, he thought he fucking was Maxwell Demon in the end, you know? And Maxwell Demon, he thought he was God."

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person, give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth."

"Why? Because rock n roll's a prostitute it should be tarted up! Performed! The music is the mask, while I, in my chiffon and taffeta well, varda the message."

"To save your wild, wild lives To ne'er your fans embitter To cease your sad demise Tonight we toast."

"What's true about music is true about life,that beauty reveals everything because it expresses nothing."

"Ha! Nothing makes one so vain as being told one is a sinner!"

"It's funny how beautiful people are when they're walking out the door. "Every great century that produces art is, so far, an artificial century, and the work that seems the most natural and simple of its time is always the result of the most self-conscious effort."

"Quite soon we actually plan to take over the world!"

Oscar Wilde

Velvet Goldmine lyrics