Explore Quotes by Kim Gordon

I try not to think too much about what the audience is thinking and what they think I should do. I'd be self-conscious if I did. Anyone becomes mannered if you think too much about what other people think.

I would be too self-conscious if I just thought of writing lyrics for a song. I have to trick myself into doing it.

Working on art, as opposed to being in a constant collaborative state, as in a band, is something that I've always done - to a smaller degree, but it always remained a part of my integral self.

Basketball and ping-pong are my two forms of exercise.

L.A. prides itself on newness or being the last frontier or just not liking old things and tearing them down to build new things. But Malibu history is interesting to me. My mom's family was one of the early families in California, so there's history going back to the 1840s or '50s.

I think that certainly, whenever you have a new band, the first record always has a certain energy to it before you know what you're doing. I think some of the early Sonic Youth stuff was maybe like that.

I don't really feel comfortable anywhere except when I'm working alone at home. It's exhausting to be out around people.

There's only so many small shows you can do. A lot of the smaller things are more side project things. Not everything is appropriate for Sonic Youth to do.

Sonic Youth, for better or worse, is/was a machine that carried me along through pregnancy, motherhood, and creative opportunities I never would have achieved on my own. I'm grateful and surprised that we were listened to, loved, ignored, and overrated.

You're always going to feel like you're catching up, and part of that is just balancing work and motherhood and the whole feeling of needing to please, which I do think girls and women feel more than men.

I love Northampton. As exciting and glamorous as New York can be, I'm always really relieved to get back there.

I just think that playing bass, like punk rock bass with a pick, wasn't meant to be done for 25 years.

I love the way Lady Gaga finds humour in fashion, but it's still very stylised.

Part of my desire to play music was because I wanted to escape the art world and the politics of it; the petty gossip-y art world. But you know, I feel like they're both equal forms of expression.

I can't think about whether I'll disappoint Sonic Youth fans. It's not like I want people to be disappointed, but I just can't control that.

I'm a slow learner. When people are so talented or facile at picking up an instrument and playing covers, like Yo La Tengo, I admire that. But I could never do that.

I feel most free onstage. The audience, it's an abstraction. You don't really see anyone out there, but you feel the audience inside you.

Everyone's so interior now, they're not really looking around them. They're on their phones.

In rock music, people have certain assumptions that it makes people more enlightened, and it really doesn't.

You can't be a strong or cool woman and be represented except in a harsh way, looking mean and cold and hard. It's like reverse sexism.

I grew up listening to John Coltrane and jazz, so they were subtle influences. I sometimes think about doing some kind of weird jazz record, but I don't know... It's on my list of things to do. I don't want to have to then go promote it.