Michael Stipe (John Michael Stipe) Quotes
I stopped taking drugs [in 1983]. There were a lot of things that led up to it. One thing was that a lover died. An ex of mine died in a car wreck and I was really trashed when I found out about it and I couldn't cry. I woke up the next morning and I said, "That's it," so I quit then. It was horrible.
Quotes to Explore
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All mankind love a lover.
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My dad was a serious alcoholic, and ultimately, that's why he died. When you're a child of someone who struggled with things like that, you look for the common thread. Is there a pattern? Is there an inheritance of pathology in some way? That haunts me.
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I am studying ancient civilizations, trying to find what happened to them, finding out why they went into a decline, why they died.
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I'm a lover of songs.
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I'm not interested in being Wonder Woman in the delivery room. Give me drugs.
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I am not a lover of Israel, of course. I have no reason to be. But I don't hate Jews.
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The word mystical is an even worse word than spirituality - that artists take drugs, and then they add some crazy extra thing to what we all know is real. But our job as artists or as human beings is to investigate what we really think is real.
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If you have children, you don't want to have drugs and drinks in the house. It's just not good.
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You see, my mother was a district nurse until she died when I was 14, and we used to move from time to time because of her work.
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We start to die when we no longer have the power to choose.
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In 2003, I almost died of an intestinal blockage when I was on a mountain in Chile, filming a segment for 'Scientific American Frontiers.'
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I didn't go for the needle at all. I never cared for drugs, because I saw what they did to most people. I thought that was the end of the road.
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I had known a couple of people who had died, but the loss of my mother contained something of the profoundly unknowable.
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My musical development stopped when Frank Sinatra died.
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Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?
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And I laughed so hard I think I died
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Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief.
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The loveliest, sweetest flower that bloomed in paradise, and the first that died, has rarely blossomed since on mortal soil. It is so frail, so delicate, a thing, it is gone if it but look upon itself; and she who ventures to esteem it hers proves by that single thought she has it not.
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In my experience, I have found that creativity demands a vigilant mind, which is weakened by the influence of drugs.
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You can never have 'equality' between two things that are not equal by definition. And so, for example, you can have equality among 'people', but not between 'men' and 'women'.
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People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.
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Better to have your enemies inside your tent pissing out, then to have them outside your tent pissing in.
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I think the business of music has really taken a huge hit. There's no doubt about it. But an artist is always going to produce their art, their music. They're going to paint, they're going to write.
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I stopped taking drugs [in 1983]. There were a lot of things that led up to it. One thing was that a lover died. An ex of mine died in a car wreck and I was really trashed when I found out about it and I couldn't cry. I woke up the next morning and I said, "That's it," so I quit then. It was horrible.
