Malcolm McLaren Quotes

Rock and roll doesn't necessarily mean a band. It doesn't mean a singer, and it doesn't mean a lyric, really. It's that question of trying to be immortal.

Fashion is never wrong.

I never intended for the Sex Pistols to be immeasurably successful.

I've always thought that gaming and YouTube and the web is a very post-punk extravaganza.

The Pistols were like my work of art. They were my canvas.

Try managing a junkie - especially if you've never been one yourself.

What are the politics of boredom?

I always said punk was an attitude. It was never about having a Mohican haircut or wearing a ripped T-shirt. It was all about destruction, and the creative potential within that.

I've always embraced failure as a noble pursuit. It allows you to be anti whatever anyone wants you to be, and to break all the rules.

There are two rules I've always tried to live by: turn left, if you're supposed to turn right; go through any door that you're not supposed to enter. It's the only way to fight your way through to any kind of authentic feeling in a world beset by fakery.

Sid Vicious began the age of participation in which everyone could be the artist. Sid proved that you don't have to play well to be the star. You can play badly, or not even at all. I endorsed that attitude. If you can't write songs, no problem - simply steal one and change it to your taste.

Don't kill the golden goose.

I was taught that to create anything you had to believe in failure, simply because you had to be prepared to go through an idea without any fear. Failure, you learned, as I did in art school, to be a wonderful thing. It allowed you to get up in the morning and take the pillow off your head.

What matters is this: Being fearless of failure arms you to break the rules. In doing so, you may change the culture and just possibly, for a moment, change life itself.

Punk's influence on music, movies, art, design and fashion is no longer in doubt. It is used as the measurement for what is cool.

Too fast to live, too young to die.

The popularity of punk rock was, in effect, due to the fact that it made ugliness beautiful.

Everyone should be commended for allowing people to make disasters, to make failures - you've just got to be sure that it's a magnificent failure and that, by creating a magnificent failure, you plant the seed.

Nothing changes and very little happens in Paris. This is a great place to work without distraction - and then I run away to New York, where I have a life!

Stealing things is a glorious occupations, particularly in the art world.