Lester Bangs

“Rock 'n' roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's a way of doing things, of approaching things. It's a way of living your life.”

“A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might want to do on your own.”

“Lou Reed is my hero because he's a lazy bastard.”

“They will never be as good as The Stooges.”

“The whole history of rock 'n' roll is a history of outcasts and weirdos.”

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.”

“Music, you know, is the only cheap form of teleportation.”

“The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.”

“The Clash is the only band that matters.”

“The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience.”

“Don't ask me why I obsessively look to rock 'n' roll bands for some kind of model for a better society. I guess it's just that I glimpsed something beautiful in a flashbulb moment once, and perhaps mistaking it for prophecy have been seeking its fulfillment ever since.”

“Great art is horse shit. Buy tacos.”

“Good taste is a virtue of the keepers, and bad taste is the privilege of the creators.”

“Punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of a bunch of kids who are sincere about what they are doing.”

“The problem with most rock journalism is that it's written by people who are in awe of the musicians.”

“I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.”

“What I look for in a band is a sense of humor and a sense of outrage. I'm not interested in nice.”

“Being a rock critic is a license to be an asshole.”

“It's the rock critic's job to be a partisan. To be a cheerleader.”

“My whole life is a contradiction. I'm a pacifist who loves violence. I'm a romantic who's cynical. I'm a socialist who's a capitalist.”