Nihilism is best done by professionals.

"The most successful stuff is sold to you as indispensable social information. The message in the music is, `We are terribly, terribly slick and suave, and if you listen to us, you can probably get a leg up in society, too.`" - on modern music

"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 young men who give everything they have to it." (1977)

"That band could kill any band at the time and frankly can just kill any bands that built on this work since...just eat any of those poodles." - on his band The Stooges.

"I don`t know Johnny Rotten, but I`m sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did." (Canadian Television, 1977)

When asked by Dinah Shore what influenced his music: "The industrialism in Detroit...what I heard walking around...boom boom bah - 10 cars...boom boom bah - 20 cars...I get a lot of my influence from the electric shaver..."