And I don't expect anyone can bring about a revolution in the way that Bob Dylan did - and really didn't - in the 1960s.
Michael Stipe

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

But I think the one thing that I can say about us is that we're very consistent about certain things and part of that is our desire to do the very best work that we can and not rest on our laurels, or not allow formula to come into what we do.
Michael Stipe

But we're very much an American band and that's that. I think that's part of the appeal outside of this country and it might be part of the reason people turned away from us within this country, because familiarity breeds contempt.
Michael Stipe

I really wanted to be on Six Feet Under as a corpse. That would be hysterical.
Michael Stipe

I think there were early critics who wanted us to change the world because the Sex Pistols failed.
Michael Stipe

I went through a period where I was really tired of seeing and reading about myself.
Michael Stipe

I'm just not that fascinating a person to have had all those lives that I've written about.
Michael Stipe

I'm not homosexual, I'm not hetrosexual, I'm just sexual.
Michael Stipe

I'm tired of being this solemn poet of the masses, the enigma shrouded in a mystery.
Michael Stipe


I've always felt that sexuality is a really slippery thing. In this day and age, it tends to get categorized and labeled, and I think labels are for food. Canned food.
Michael Stipe

If I'm tired of me, I'm sure the public is as well.
Michael Stipe

If you disagree with me, fine! Because that's the great thing about America, we can disagree!
Michael Stipe

My feeling is that labels are for canned food... I am what I am - and I know what I am.
Michael Stipe

My iPod that was programmed by Peter Buck. It has 7,000 songs hand-picked for me by him.
Michael Stipe

Never eat broccoli when there are cameras around.
Michael Stipe

On planes I always cry. Something about altitude, the lack of oxygen and the bad movies. I cried over a St. Bernard movie once on a plane. That was really embarrassing.
Michael Stipe

Peter was sick of being a pop star, the guitar god, and so he decided to teach himself other instruments. Among the instruments that he picked up was the mandolin.
Michael Stipe

So, we just kind of created our own thing and that's part of the beauty of Athens: is that it's so off the map and there's no way you could ever be the East Village or an L.A. scene or a San Francisco scene, that it just became its own thing.
Michael Stipe

So, we went from being an Athens band to being a Georgia band to being a Southern band to being an American band from the East Coast to being an American band and now we're kind of an international phenomenon.
Michael Stipe