Punk Quotes

I'm thinking of remaking 'Psycho' again. Doing a third remake. The idea this time is to really change it - we're talking about doing a punk rocker setting.

A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It's below the radar. The beauty of it is that you're not supposed to always know. It's subterranean.

It's such a measure of your solidarity with Ed, that when you would give lectures, he would be wearing a tartan tie that matched. And I demanded that outfit, I thought it was so punk - her long skirt, she looked like a Scottish queen, so regal.

What we get in punk these days is the "anti-anti": Someone comes up with something, then the next generation is against that, and then the next generation is against that, and then that thing becomes a problem. There's these layers of anti-, and so many of them are just so self-serving. It's not about larger freedom.

What we get in punk these days are layers of 'anti-', and so many of them are so self-serving. It's not about larger freedom.

We're getting bombarded by the most polarizing reactions. As much as the punk in me likes it, I'm really surprised by the weird energy that comes at you when people talk to you like that. I mean, I know there are people out there who loathe me and loathe Low, but they stop short of broadcasting it. It's just interesting to see that line getting breached.

If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I'm getting rid of grunge.

Punk came along and grunge made guitar solos uncool.

Grunge is a hippied romantic version of punk.

What the Sex Pistols made sounded like quality, because they had a big label and top engineers and producers. But punk rock shouldn't be quality; it should be f**king mania. It should be gnarled, a glorious lo-fi live sound.

People will tell me, "You're such a punk rebel," this or that, but I was not that growing up. I was actually a super-sheltered, conservative girl. Now, there was probably a bit of me that was like, "Why do I have to be like that?"

I always liked the skinny punk girls; I even loved them before punk.

Hot funk, cold punk, even if it's old junk, it's still rock and roll to me.

A significant event for me was learning Hank Williams, reconnecting with his music's simplicity, which inspired me to inhabit the same territory. It's different, because I grew up on Led Zeppelin, The Stooges and punk, so in that sense I'm mutating country and folk more than a few degrees.

I was about 16 when punk started to happen... It felt like you had this naive idea that you could change things just by wearing something.

I was the punk outsider who nobody messed with. I was fearless. At 16, I graduated and moved out.

One of my friends was a stage hand at a Bob Dylan show in the mid-90s and I remember him telling me that somebody crowd surfed during the gig. And this friend of mine was an old punk rock guy - he was totally humiliated by it. But some of Bob's people were there and they said, "Oh, Bob will be so excited! This is the kind of energy we want at his shows." That's where the old school was at.

Witchcraft scum exploiting the dumb turning children into punks and slaves.

It's true the punk fashion itself was iconographic: rips and dirt, safety pins, zips, slogans, and hairstyles. These motifs were so iconic in themselves - motifs of rebellion.

Everybody gets a tag. If you listen to a Velvet Underground record, you don't think, 'Godfathers of Punk.' You just think, 'This sounds great.' The tags are there in order to help try to sell something by giving it a name that's going to stick in somebody's memory. But it doesn't describe it. So 'depressing' isn't a word I would use to describe my music. But there is some sadness in it -- there has to be, so that the happiness in it will matter.

You punk asshole. What was this? A game for you? This is my life’s work you just annihilated and for what? Shits and giggles? Or was this nothing more than a fraternity prank? Please tell me that you didn’t just ruin my integrity to get some kind of drinking points. This is something I’ve been working for since before you were born. How dare you make a mockery of me. I hope to God that one day someone degrades you like this so that you’ll know, just once in your spoiled pompous life, what humiliation feels like! (Tory)

I grabbed my drummer's cymbal in my teeth just as he crashed down on it with his sticks-I blacked out. I was a punk in those days. It was in Seattle. I still have all my teeth too, it's amazing.

I had to get a driver's license and drive to St. Louis to find the punk-rock scene that was happening there. And there was a punk-rock scene. It was sweet. It was real. It was like everywhere else in the county. It was a handful of people who were feeling the same pull, and, of course, it was like the Island of Misfit Toys in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer [1964]. Just the freaks, the fags, the fat girls, the unbelievable eccentrics .

Science is very vibrant. There are always new observations to be found. And it's all in the interest in challenging the authority that came before you. That's consistent with the punk rock ethos that suggests that you should not take what people say at face value.

I am concerned about the environment. I love to wear black. I think government is best when it stays out of people's lives and business as much as possible. I love punk rock. I believe in a strong national defense. I have a tattoo. I believe government should always be efficient and accountable. I have lots of gay friends. And yes, I am a Republican.

On 'Van Halen,' I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I'd say that at the time of 'Fair Warning,' I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people's minds I'm just a gunslinger.

[Columbia House] magazines were how I found out about the punk world going on in New York. Because of what I read, at the age of 15, I hounded the local record store to order a copy of Horses [1975] for me by Patti Smith.

I tell people too young to know that we came up during two of the most dogmatic times in recent history - the so-called hippie era and the punk era, both of which had a set of codes and rules that you had to look and dress and think a certain way, and for sure, to be of a certain age.

Whether or not punk is the flavor of the month is not important for us. Bad Religion has been popular through many different climates. When heavy metal was popular, when new wave was popular, Bad Religion was still there underneath the mainstream selling more and more records.

There weren't a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn't have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

The whole punk ethic was do-it-yourself, and I've always been very literal, especially as a kid. When they said that anybody can do this, I was like, 'OK, that's me.'

I took Punk to be the detonation of some slow-fused projectile buried deep in society's flank a decade earlier, and I took it to be, somehow, a sign.

I'm getting tired of saying hello to Stan Smith and not getting any reply. I'm cocky and confident and maybe I'm too bullheaded sometimes, but I think I have some fan and player support. I know what the others say, but I'm not that obnoxious. I am not a punk. I'm 5' 10", 155 pounds. I've got broad shoulders and I can pack a punch. Most of these guys are windbags anyway. If they ever try anything with me, I'll be to the net fast.

Lou's such an old punk he was around when the Ramones were junkie hustlers first and musicians second, when punk meant something other than a mass-marketing concept designed to help the bridge-and-tunnel crowd feel cool.

I'd been a Bowie fan before punk and used to get no end of trouble. I was always getting knocked about and having to run up the street, getting chased by people. It was horrible.

I hated it so much as a child. I just didn't like it when punk bands went metal, it really bothered me. It was happening left and right in the 1980s. It started I think with D.C. bands - G.I., Soul Side, they went metal. Right at that time, R.E.M. was coming out, these more kinda feminine bands, and I was more drawn to that than to go metal. And you remember MTV, with the bad metal. But even Metallica, it just wasn't my direction.

We are simultaneously the most hated, loved, feared and admired nation on this planet. In short, we are Frank Sinatra.

I went through a real punk stage-I had braids, red hair, pink hair, green hair, I cut it into a Mohawk, the lot. Then about five years ago, I dyed it dark and stayed out of the sun to get pale, because I hated looking like everyone else, all blonde hair and tanned skin.

I was a punk rocker when I was a teenager. I wanted to look like Nancy Spungen. I had dyed blonde hair and lots of piercings.

It is hard to explain to people now how hard it was being a punk back then [the 1970s]. If you had short hair, didn't wear bell bottoms and walked down the street, chances are some asshole in an El Camino was going to kick your ass.

I'm just starting to scratch the surface of what really makes me happy and it's taken me a while to admit that acting like a little child and being a jerk and a punk is fun.

My mom had a Canon AE1 camera and I read the manual and that's basically how I became a photographer. I was in the Baltimore punk scene. I knew it was a special time, so I went out and documented that whole era. I was the only person to really do it of my friends in real black and white, beautiful portraits.

The funniest thing happened in one of my first scenes. In the beginning Emma was really arrogant and punk and in every scene she would slam the door when she walked in or out.

The boys in the office preferred Daft Punk and the song "Robot Rock" as an anthem, speaking excitedly and without irony about wanting to become robots one day. That made me wonder: Why? What's the pull of being a robot?

Disco satisfied social as well as musical needs. Disco people got to dress up all the time and go to places ... where everybody sort of 'looked good' - and later, after an evening of chemical alteration, everybody looked even better, and the next thing they knew, they were getting The Blox Job. Punk, in the late seventies, purported to be a rebellion against this sort of silly behavior. Maniac bands started thrashing away in dingy little places with no decor, developing their own silly behavior. ... New wave evolved from punk, basically, by sterilizing its own safety pin.

My dad took me to all the best rock and punk shows when I was growing up and music has always been a part of my life. So I'm very interested in the music scene and I suppose that's why I've ended up going out with musicians. Dave Pirner is still one of my best friends.

As a late teenager, the punk movement pushed me further. In particular, the Clash, which happened to leak through the time of disco, showed me that there was this cross-cultural sound that could cut across genres and audiences. Like punk was to disco, rap music was a rebellion against R&B, which had adopted disco and made it worse.

I was trained as an actress. But I wasn't a very convincing actress, so I started doing punk poetry and then fell into doing stand-up.

In the beginning my energy and passion for acting came from an almost punk rock need to express a lot of anger wherever that may have come from. As I got older, it became or is coming more from a place of wanting to use the craft to help others in some way, to hold a mirror up to the situations that we're going through, to actually be more cautious about the way that I use the power of film and to see if there's anything that I can do in the performances that will resonate in the public a similar string that's on people's minds and is on my mind. That way we have that relationship.

When I write in the studio, I tend to gravitate toward the ability to play really loud, aggressive, post-punk stuff, with big, heavy guitars and a big rock drum sound.