Quote

I've never written a song that's hopeless. I'm not a hopeless person. I'm crazily optimistic. I crazily see the good in people. I crazily see the way out of a terrible situation. I crazily try to be the diplomat. If there are two warring factions in my life, I want them to agree to disagree at the very least.

Michael Stipe

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Michael Stipe
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: January 4
Actor
Composer
Film Producer
Guitarist
Musician
Peace Activist
Record Producer
Restaurateur
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Television Actor
Decatur
Georgia
John Michael Stipe
JMS
Stinky
Optimistic
Persons
Agree
Crazily
Person
Terrible
Warring
Trying
Least
Diplomat
Way
Situation
Diplomats
Good
Written
Factions
Never
Song
Hopeless
Life
Disagree
People
Two

More quotes by Michael Stipe

Image
I distinctly remember a conversation with my band in the van where I was having a complete meltdown. It was 1984, I think, and I was huddled in the back corner of our van and saying, I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. I didn't want to play any more shows. I just wanted to stop.
Michael Stipe
Image
I'm tired of being this solemn poet of the masses, the enigma shrouded in a mystery.
Michael Stipe
Image
Punk-rock records came out and you bought whatever you could find. But Devo didn't happen for another three years. Sex Pistols didn't tour the States until '78. At that time, for me, it was really about CBGB, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, the Ramones, and Television.
Michael Stipe
Image
It was '86. We were a big enough name and we had enough cache that MTV wanted to play us, so, along with Michael Jackson and Madonna, they played our upside-down, black-and-white, backward, single unedited footage of a rock quarry with orange letters over the top of it and called it art.
Michael Stipe
Image
So, when you divide the world into music lovers, music fans and then those people who are just very casual about their music, it's wallpaper to them, it's elevator music, it's just the thing that's playing in the background that helps them through their day.
Michael Stipe
Image
If I'm tired of me, I'm sure the public is as well.
Michael Stipe
Image
I went through a period where I was really tired of seeing and reading about myself.
Michael Stipe
Image
Anything you do as a group is fraught with compromise... But everyone 's got to do that, right? It's part of being a good parent, or a good boyfriend, whatever.
Michael Stipe
Image
Because the casual music listeners are the ones who turn on the radio and they don't really care what's playing, they just know that they kinda like it or it's easy to drive to or it's easy to sing along to or whatever.
Michael Stipe
Image
Anybody that walks can sing.
Michael Stipe
Image
I was a teenager, we were pretty much fully indoctrinated, thanks to sexual scare tactics. I remember so many public-health commercials with a B-actor in a fake alley background warning us to use protection or telling us the only real safe choice was abstinence. We were highly frightened of sex from day one. There was no free-swinging '90s.
Michael Stipe
Image
You don't need to be talented. You don't even have to play the guitar to be a guitar player in a punk-rock band. So I, in a very naïve and teenage way, said, That's it. I'm going to be in a band.
Michael Stipe
Image
I'm just not that fascinating a person to have had all those lives that I've written about.
Michael Stipe
Image
In fact, a lot of critics seemed to consider R.E.M. the first American music since the '60s to break out on its own and develop a stand-alone sound.
Michael Stipe
Image
By nature I will find hope in everything. Even if it's the most incredibly hopeless situation or circumstance. That's just me... I'll never be able to see things any other way.
Michael Stipe
Image
I came to New York for the first time with Peter Buck at age 19. We spent a week living out of a van on the street in front of a club in the West 60s called Hurrah. It's where Pylon played. I saw Klaus Nomi play there. And Michael Gira's band before he did Swans-they all wore cowboy boots and were so cool and had great hair. I was so jealous.
Michael Stipe
Image
The artwork for the record is kind of an homage to that. It's a collage, which rhymes with homage, I just realized. It's an homage to this kind of almost like a teenager's idea of what the future might look like, if he were using a Xerox machine and cut-and-pasting it together. Which is exactly what we did to come up with the artwork.
Michael Stipe
Image
When we first started, we were a band from Athens and that was so off the map.
Michael Stipe
Image
To be called an elder statesman is so unbelievably insulting. Brad Pitt is exactly three years younger than me.
Michael Stipe
Image
Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.
Michael Stipe