Genesis P-Orridge
The punk rockers said, 'Learn three chords and form a band.' And we thought, 'Why learn any chords?' We wanted to make music like Ford made cars on the industrial belt. Industrial music for industrial people.Collection: Music
The status quo is presented as something to aspire to, whereas for us, the status quo was something we wanted to shatter in order to create the space for people to choose for themselves.Collection: Space
Why is there no cure for cancer? Because the medical industry doesn't want one! And the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want one! Because they would lose too much money!Collection: Medical
If we confound and break up the proposed unfolding the world impresses upon us, we can give ourselves the space to consider what we want to be as a species.Collection: Space
With Thobbing Gristle, that era from '75 to '81 was a period when the politics of the time demanded anger and rage.Collection: Anger
Change comes from reflection.Collection: Change
You have an absolute right to translate poetry in any form with any sound. It's all up for grabs.Collection: Poetry
I met William Burroughs in 1971. I got his address through a magazine and went to London to spend time with him.
As a little boy, I never felt comfortable with being human.
England was very frustrating in the Seventies for anyone who was trying to wake up. It was visible in punk, in clothes, and in the revival of mods and rockers fighting. All kinds of things were going on that just weren't individual to myself.
I would experiment with porridge - make porridge pancakes, fry porridge - and so friends started calling me 'Porridge.' But I got to feel that I was becoming a character, a work of fiction, in a sense.
People have become obsessed with the greed of celebrity and self-branding and wanting to be known and recognized and succeed in some way, and they're not prepared to share and help each other.
Brian Jones had this really ethereal atmosphere around him.
Me and Lady Jaye hung out with Anita Pallenberg a few times in the house she lived in with Brian Jones.
In the art world, sentimentality and intimacy and the emotive side of lives are considered very uncool. There's nervousness around intimacy.
All the great artists illustrate their approach to life in the work they make.
Life and art are inseparable.
'Star Trek' works for me because it deals with the petty issues of humankind.
Pleasure is a cultural weapon. Use it wisely.
I'm not a man trapped in a woman's body. I'm a brain trapped in a human body.
I really feel that I've been unjustly exorcised from the story of psychedelic music.
Haircuts are luxuries and, as such, should be as expensive as you can possibly afford.
Celebrity haircuts are one of the great perks of even a little media profile.
A real New Yorker is always someone who came here from somewhere else to avoid some kind of persecution, often sexual-preference based, or to be discovered in one of the infinite-though-no-longer-thriving alternative scenes, i.e. theater, music, dance, vaudeville, art, drag, or, in those of the greatest egos, to be 'the next Andy Warhol.'
My mind jumbles things, reassembles them, and plays with words without even being asked.
Everyone knows that when things are out of balance, things go wrong.
I was born in Manchester, England.
There's always a way to say something that could seem really commonplace and make it special again.
Even if the world outside is destroying itself and fragmented and paranoid and fearful, the job of the artist is to embrace and hold people and say, 'It's OK, be safe here.'
My father gave me a copy of 'Seven Years in Tibet,' and that's what turned me on to Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.
Once you're looking for wisdom, you have to look at why things happen and why people behave how they do: you cannot, in all conscience, accept any form of prejudice.
We all fall into biological and mental habits. It's an easy way for us to navigate day-to-day work and life, but it also doesn't do us any favours in terms of growing into wisdom, growing into a greater understanding of each other, growing into a deeper relationship - all the things that we really crave.
Curiosity is a great weapon for the artist.
Imagination should always be treasured, even when it's slightly off-key.
I am so sick and tired of being told what I'm supposed to look like!
I guess I'm dedicated to breaking every inherited mould I can in my private life.
We should always be looking for the unity in things instead of the differences.
In the old days, maybe we'd come across Captain Beefheart, buy a record, go, 'This is great!' and notice how his music is evolving, changing, and becoming more complex, more radical. And we would follow that progression and see it reflected in the alternative culture it came from.
A band can be so much more than just a way to play songs.
Within TG, we liberated the use of the lyric forever. There was no longer a taboo on what could be discussed in the conceptual format of a song.
I've discovered the joys of happiness.
When the blues came out, it was something pure and undefined, but when all these white groups got hold of it, it became something else that didn't sound anything like the original. So you had Led Zeppelin doing their thing, which had come all the way from the blues.
The great irony was that, while I was being portrayed as a monster, I was in Khatmandu with my children, doing soup kitchens for Tibetan refugees, using all the money from my records to feed three hundred people a day, and working with monks connected to the Sammye Ling Buddhist centre in Scotland.
I've always aimed to create something pure.
I think we can only ultimately change the world by example and by fearlessly embracing what could happen.
Somebody once asked me, 'What do you do?' and I flippantly answered 'I'm a cultural engineer.' With hindsight, I kind of am - but if I got too self-conscious about it, it wouldn't work.
Once you believe things are permanent, you're trapped in a world without doors.
We must embrace unity, not separation - sharing, go back to small, caring communities. Unity, not separation, is what has to happen.
The gender is irrelevant; the identity is the one you should try and create for yourself by yourself, and the narrative of your own life becomes your own book.
We live in this miraculous technological environment, and yet our human behaviour is still governed by basic impulses from prehistoric times.