Punk Rock Quotes

This is car theft. This is running away. This is some punk-rock New Orphans shit. This is not like any Vivian Apple I have ever been before. But this is Vivian Apple at the end of the world. ~ Katie Coyle

FICTION is a series of unintended coincidence,confabulation,and quasi-lucid lying made plausible enough for an author and a reader to cohabitate for a secret, brief and sinful affair. Nothing is real.Except imagination~with a pinch of perception, and a dash of collusion used as the Clabber.
Be So Advised. ~ J.D. Brayton

The alt-right 2016 is like punk rock 1977: it's daring, new, socially unacceptable, inevitable, and scaring the crap out of everyone. ~ Michael Stutz

Punk rock has become another viable art form. It always was. But now it's like everyone's doing it. ~ Tre Cool

I've always been spiritual but I've never had a proper context, and it took me a while to find the proper context. It's hard to realize you can have any kind of relationship with God you want ... and so I now have a punk rock relationship with God ~ Billy Corgan

My whole view of music completely flipped over on its head. I grew up listening to punk rock, SST. I liked people that were making music that weren't necessarily very good at their instruments, it was more about the ideas they had than how well they could play and sing. ~ Doug Martsch

The physicality and speed of the music, the sheer free abandon of the crown and the band joining together pulsing as one. Something awakened in me. I realized music could jar people out of their comfort zone, challenge them as to the very meaning of their existence. All the times in my life I'd wanted to disrupt things, to shake things up, and I now saw it being done in the healthiest way. Real alchemy. I fell in love with punk rock. ~ Flea

Looking back on the production of 'Nevermind,' I'm embarrassed by it now. It's closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record. ~ Kurt Cobain

I was in lots of dodgy bands growing up and I always fancied myself in a band. But, you know, I was rubbish at writing music. So maybe one day I'll play a rock star, or punk rocker. ~ Gemma Arterton

Halfway through the set, the lead singer, who goes by Cloud, knife in hand, begins to stab at the cutout of Copal Brandt with a lion's passion. Out of nowhere blood is produced and Cloud proceeds to rub it all over his own face and body, then on his own bandmates. Afterwards he roars into the microphone, 'Do you know why we're doing this, McAllen? We're doing this FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON!!!!!!!!! ~ Fernando A. Flores

If girls are ever going to start to be in bands as the norm rather than as the exception. They need to see people up there that have just started playing. That's something that had gotten lost. I think that's why there are so many great girl punk rock bands now. It's like you have to make up your own rules because the old rules don't apply. You just have to start with what you have. ~ Tobi Vail

I think I've become more relaxed throughout my career. I don't feel the need to jump up and down and make a big noise to get people to pay attention to me. I don't need to do punk rock gestures or eat a cockroach or do something weird to say I exist. ~ Nicolas Cage

I give Iggy credit for deconstructing the very idea of entertainment. ~ Kim Gordon

I love dancing, but I'm not that good of a singer. I sang in punk rock bands in high school and college and stuff, but that mostly involved lots of screaming. ~ Brian Dietzen

Blue jeans, white shirt
Walked into the room you know you made my eyes burn
It was like, James Dean, for sure
You're so fresh to death and sick as ca-cancer
You were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip hop
But you fit me better than my favourite sweater, and I know
That love is mean, and love hurts
But I still remember that day we met in december, oh baby!

I will love you 'til the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby can you see through the tears
Love you more
Than those bitches before
Say you'll remember, oh baby, say you'll remember
I will love you 'til the end of time

Big dreams, gangster
Said you had to leave to start your life over
I was like, "No please, stay here,
We don't need no money we can make it all work,"
But he headed out on sunday, said he'd come home monday
I stayed up waitin', anticipatin', and pacin'
But he was chasing paper
"Caught up in the game" ‒ that was the last I heard

I will love you 'til the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby can you see through the tears
Love you more
Than those bitches before
Say you'll remember, oh baby, say you'll remember
I will love you 'til the end of time

You went out every night
And baby that's alright
I told you that no matter what y ~ Lana Del Rey

Noel shook his head. "You think better of this scene than I do, Ruby. Don't you see how fake those girls are? Let it go. Have a laugh about it when you're older. Forget that junk."

I wanted to believe him, to skip off to some punk-rock hangout and develop ironic distance and start over in a universe where it didn't matter what any of these people thought about me. But I couldn't.

I just loved them. ~ E. Lockhart

The period right before punk rock where people like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were really strong. ~ Arto Lindsay

I think I've always been extremely conscious of the kind of empowerment that comes from realizing that you're in a position to express yourself. And the fact is that - and this is the thing about punk rock - that everyone is in a position to create culture, and that point has never been lost on me. To me, that's an important political aspect of doing this, and trying to live in a way that's about dialogue as opposed to like spectacle ~ J. Robbins

Music brought the war in Vietnam right into our bedrooms. Songs we heard from America made us interested in politics; they were history lessons in a palatable, exciting form. We demonstrated against the Vietnam and Korean wars, discussed sexual liberation, censorship and pornography and read books by Timothy Leary, Hubert Selby Jr (Last Exit to Brooklyn) and Marshall McLuhan because we'd heard all these people referred to in songs or interviews with musicians. [...] Music, politics, literature, art all crossed over and fed into each other. There were some great magazines around too [...] Even though we couldn't afford to travel, we felt connected to other countries because ideas and events from those places reached us through music and magazines. ~ Viv Albertine

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling conventions. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.
But this strategy alone couldn't provide the distance I wanted, from Joyce or my past. After all, there were thousands of so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerant. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names. ~ Barack Obama

Nico looked very tall and thin wearing a opaque black sweatshirt hoodie and dark inked skinny jeans. His outer physical structure was handsome and gaunt, straight jet black hair razored and clipped in angles, a few purple highlights, and his white skin toned the color of alabaster. She had always liked the slender salamander type. He totally looked punk rock tonight, and that made him look absolutely awesome! A curtain of fog parted in front of him, giving him even more of the illusion as if he was part of a rock band at a rock band concert. Katty now saw Nico with exaggerated clarity. Nico Rocket looked so freakin' hot! He looked so good-looking at times, especially within the dark scenes of rolling fog and a pitchy darkness. She randomly wondered what he looked like before he was bit and turned into a Vampire. Had he been a Renaissance geek just like her? Before she could really examine him and fantasize of what he must have looked like before turning into a Vampire, the fog closed in all around him again, surrounding him with a ring of solitary imprisonment. He now lurked as a shadow among the shadows, disappearing into the illusion of gray's. She didn't like him for not showing up on time, but all had been forgiven as soon as she had seen him all dressed up in his Gothic best. So what if he didn't believe in punctuality? His hotness sure made up for the rest! Through the fog, she saw his bright red eyes pierce through the heaviness of the darkness. He then broke free from ~ Keira D. Skye

As a New Yorker you can't help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted 'Rhapsody in Blue' here; the Velvet Underground are from New York. ~ Moby

Punk rock will never die, until something more dangerous replaces it. ~ Jello Biafra

Society gets by from the help of its citizens. ~ Brian Joyce

I guess it was only fitting that to them PUNK was a four letter word. However, to people like Dylan and I-punk was our hearts-our souls. We grew up with a lot of uncertainties. To be a teenager isn't always pretty, and our music reflected that. ~ Brian Joyce

I'm pretty sure that when babies are born in Oregon, they leave the hospital with birth certificates - and teeny-tiny sleeping bags. Everyone in the state camps. The hippies and the rednecks. The hunters and the tree huggers. Rich people. Poor people. Even rock musicians. Especially rock musicians. Our band had perfected the art of punk-rock camping, throwing a bunch of crap into the van with, like, an hour's notice and just driving out into the mountains, where we'd drink beer, burn food, jam on our instruments around the campfire, and sack out under the open sky. Sometimes, on tour, back in the early hardscrabble days, we'd even camp as an alternative to crashing in another crowded, roach-infested rock 'n' roll house.
I don't know if it's because no matter where you live, the wilderness is never that far off, but it just seemed like everyone in Oregon camped. ~ Gayle Forman

When I was younger, I went through a lot of different phases. One day I'd be punk rock, and the next I would be tomboyish, and then I would be really girly. I was so weird. My two best friends and I were just crazy and goofy! ~ Ashley Benson

Ed Friedman: [talking about Patti Smith] One time she told me, "Allen Ginsberg thought I was a cute boy and he tried to pick me up, so I said, "LOOK AT THE TITS, ALLEN! NOTICE THE TITS! ~ Legs McNeil

I need punk rock. It's the medicine for me, but it's bitter and sickening. If you don't need it - if you're happy and healthy - run toward that. ~ Bradford Cox

Caitlin Cary and I were always talking about X when we talked about whiskeytown, before it became an actual band. We like the concept of there being no real front person in X, yet this kind of switch up of vocals and really their sheer power, and their ability to sort of bastardise punk rock and midwetsren rock and even country into their own sound. ~ Ryan Adams

I am genuinely into soul, R&B and hip hop - all these genres that get slapped under the 'soul' genre. That spoke to me more than it did to my punk-rock friends. And punk spoke more to me than it did to my soul friends. I basically didn't fit comfortably in either world. ~ Patrick Stump

I was just a punk-rock kid who never played acoustic guitar. ~ Dave Pirner

I got tired of the Ramones around the time I quit and I really got into rap. I thought it was the new punk rock. LL Cool J was my biggest idol. ~ Dee Dee Ramone

If you've sold over a million records, you are not punk rock, you are milking the system for everything that it's worth. ~ Billy Corgan

It's really hard to imagine there ever being the kind of impact there was when punk rock happened in the late 70's. I wish there would be one big change like that again, but I don't know if that'll ever happen. ~ Penelope Spheeris

All of the punk-rock bands of the era would come in and play, and my job on Punk Rock Night was that I would go into the slam pit, and ... I was 24 or 25, and I'd slam dance in the pit. ~ William Forsythe

Emo: e-mo 1. A much-maligned, mocked, and misunderstood term for melodic, expressive, and confessional punk rock. ~ Andy Greenwald

I played in Velvet Revolver, which is a raw, bombastic blues band with a punk rock edge to it. It's like everything is based around the blues, no matter what the groove is. ~ Scott Weiland

I'm in a band. I don't go to church every Sunday. I love punk rock music. Sometimes I use swear words a lot. I respect and admire gay men and women. I'm obsessed with horror films. I know what shame feels like. And guess what old man? Jesus is still my Savior. ~ Hayley Williams

San Francisco, America's B-movie imitation of Paris. San Francisco, the city that ruined punk rock. San Francisco, the most intolerant place in the country. ~ Jim Goad

I felt like no one was really looking out for me, that I was marginal and incidental. I compensated by being spongelike, impressionable, and available to whatever and whoever provided the most comfort, the most sense of belonging. I was learning two sets of skills simultaneously: adaptation - linguistic and aesthetic - in order to fit in, but also, how to survive on my own. ~ Carrie Brownstein

So now we're here and we are not dead, and Mom, what's more punk rock than living despite all that which has tried to make you not? ~ Neil Hilborn

I've never recognized 'emo' as a genre of music. I always thought it was the most retarded term ever. I know there is this generic commonplace that every band that gets labeled with that term hates it. They feel scandalized by it. But honestly, I just thought that all the bands I played in were punk rock bands. The reason I think it's so stupid is that - what, like the Bad Brains weren't emotional? What - they were robots or something? It just doesn't make any sense to me. ~ Guy Picciotto

I can play punk rock, and I love playing punk rock, but I was into every other style of music before I played punk rock. ~ Travis Barker

If a man can tell if he's been successful in his life by having great friends, then I have been very successful. ~ Johnny Ramone

I love punk rock, but I also love metal. ~ Penelope Spheeris

There's comedians who I consider extremely punk rock who I've seen do very political stand up in places where nobody wants to hear that. It's uncomfortable and scary and you realize it's the punkest performance you've ever witnessed. ~ Kathleen Hanna

I enjoy punk, the attitude as well as the music, but I don't feel like I have to be a carbon copy of it and invite all this controversy just to be punk rock. ~ Hayley Williams

As a child there was no place for adventure or experimentation. I guess that kind of freedom started in high school with punk rock. That's what enlightened me to not being afraid to express myself. ~ Mark McNairy

It's funny; we never had anything like credibility. Even though we all have some sort of punk-rock background, but so what? I really don't care about that. What's credibility anyway? Who has credibility? ~ Mark McGrath

Tell me sir if you will, where in the Bible does it state that it's ok to judge others based purely on assumption? Can you see now who is the lesser evil between the two? ~ Sofea Shah

The music industry went through such a strange stretch in 1977, especially in this country, with the whole punk rock thing coming about. Punk was rebellious-and justified in that response-but it had very little to do with music, and so it created a highly-charged but frighteningly floundering atmosphere that I found very, very disheartening. Musical quality for me has always been an important part of rock'n'roll-and winning recognition for that has long been an uphill battle all the way. Punk seemed like rock'n'roll utterly without the music. ~ Steve Winwood

Triple 6 Mafia and Mystikal in Atlanta was one of my first shows. I remember how sweaty and smashed up everybody was, and it was so punk rock. ~ Yelawolf

Nobody ever said that life was fair. ~ Billie Joe Armstrong

I've been making electronic music for twenty some odd years but, because I grew up playing in punk rock bands, when I started touring, I thought in order to be a viable touring musician I had to do it with a band. I would DJ or tour with a full rock band. ~ Moby

Style has always been very important to us. We grew up in the '70s. Music was glam rock, punk rock and a very stylish movement. ~ Nick Rhodes

Pledge Allegiance was a pretty generic name back in the day. In the 80's I was the promoter for all the punk rock shows and I'd book Black Flag, Dead Kennedy's, Minor Threat etc and I'd hook them up with places to stay if needed so it's hard to keep track of it all. ~ Reed Mullin

Prizing elegance, sweet emotions, and fantasy more than morals and truth; wallowing in fleeting romance rather than trying to give meaning to life, when who knows what's going to happen to you anyway; ignoring virtue and conventions to cherish only the pleasures you are definitely experiencing now: this is the Cocoro of Rococo. No matter how much deep thought, hard work, and agonizing effort went into coaxing out some insight, if that insight is boring, or not beautiful, it doesn't matter. And even if something is made just for laughs, if you find it pleasing, it has value. Other people's opinions and labor do not figure into your assessment; choosing things with your own personal sense of "I like this, I don't like that" is the ultimate individualism that sustains the very foundation of Rococo. Rococo, therefore, embodies the spirit of punk rock and anarchism more than any philosophy. Only in Rococo - elegant yet in bad taste, extravagant yet defiant and lawless - can I discover the meaning of life. ~ Novala Takemoto

I love punk rock, The Clash, The Ramones, The Cramps. I love where it all came from, and music for my ears now, it has to have that same electricity, adrenaline and danger. ~ Imelda May

Hit the Dead for they won't listen,
Hit the Dead for they don't know,
Hit the Dead they're all imprisoned,
Hit the Dead before they go... ~ Peter L Masters

When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands. ~ Moby

I never wanted to be part of any scene, I never wanted to be a part of anything, I wanted to do my own thing. Those are the lessons I learned from punk rock. ~ Buzz Osborne

Our band had perfected the art of punk-rock camping, throwing a bunch of crap into the van with, like, an hour's notice and just driving out into the mountains, where we'd drink beer, burn food, jam on our instruments around the campfire, and sack out under the open sky. ~ Gayle Forman

I don't need to convince men that feminism is important, that just isn't a goal of mine. I can't even have that conversation of whether or not it's important, because if someone asks me that ... I don't want to have a conversation with them until they grow up. ~ Kathleen Hanna

This is a night of your life. Live it accordingly. ~ Charles Romalotti

I certainly didn't want to be in a punk rock band, because I had already been in a punk rock band. I wanted to be in a band that could do anything - like Led Zeppelin. ~ Jeff Ament

In fact, punk rock means exemplary manners to your fellow human beings. ~ Joe Strummer

It was very punk rock for me to take a stab at working with Justin Bieber. I don't know how people portray that, or 'Climax,' for that matter. But for me, it was the most adventurous thing I could have done at that exact moment. ~ Ariel Rechtshaid

I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music. ~ Reggie Watts

I'm tired of being ruled by the Skull and Bones. The only place they belong are on punk-rock albums! ~ Jello Biafra

When Punk Rock happened, it created an opening in the culture ... it made it ok to think you could play music, even though you had no musical training. ~ Kim Gordon

You're not actually going to marry this fucktard, are you?" –Jack ~ Nessie Strange

I came up playing in both punk rock bands and hip-hop bands, and I found a more universal way of reaching people, especially with music that has a message to it. ~ Michael Franti

No one wants to die or even plans to die, at least not when you are young and living life on top of everything, stepping on gold, running the miles with hot chicks on tow, but even if I wasn't a rock star, and just a normal civilian, I still wouldn't plan to die young. Death is so boring. ~ Sofea Shah

If Shakespeare were alive now, no doubt he'd be interviewed every week and his opinions canvassed on every subject from national foreign policy to the social effects of punk rock. But in his day nobody cared what Shakespeare's views were about anything, and he wouldn't have been allowed to discuss public affairs publicly. He wasn't, therefore, under a constant pressure to become opinionated. ~ Northrop Frye

Punk is just like any other sub culture or music. Straight rock music has those elements. I grew up in a place where the punk rock kids fed the homeless in the town square. ~ Justin Sane

Propriety is the new punk. ~ Aldus Santos

For some reason, Greg Ginn from Black Flag is recording an Access: Hollywood episode in my bathroom, doing an interview with one of those interchangeable video host babes. He's talking about how an important part of making it as a punk rock musician is to buy a good condo at a low interest rate, and then list it on Airbnb when you're on tour. While he talks, he eats a loaf of garlic bread that has currywurst on it, which is a trending meme that week. ~ Jon Konrath

I went to art school and never thought I'd be a musician, but then punk rock came along in the late 70s and kind of ruined my life. So I quit art school to get involved in music and I've been doing it ever since. ~ Michael Gira

And the twentysomethings are the generation that's been led to believe that they missed out on all the best times. 'That's pretty much the definition of what we are, is punk rockers who weren't into punk rock when it was thriving,' Kurt says. 'All my life, that's been the case, because when I got into the Beatles, the Beatles had been broken up for years and I didn't know it. I was real excited about going to see the Beatles and I found out they had broken up. Same thing with Led Zeppelin. They'd been broken up for years already. ~ Michael Azerrad

DEVO was like the punk band that non Punk America saw as Punk and so when people who were really into Punk rock would be walking around on the streets the jocks who learned about Punk through Devo would roll down their windows and yell at the Punks: 'HEY, DEVO!!' ~ Thurston Moore

Back in the "leather and lace" eighties, I was the fantasy editor for a publishing company in New York City. It was a great time to be young and footloose on the streets of Manhattan - punk rock and folk music were everywhere; Blondie, the Eurythmics, Cyndi Lauper, and Prince were all strutting their stuff on the newly created MTV; and the eighties' sense of style meant I could wear my scruffy black leather into the office without turning too many heads. The fantasy field was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was right in the middle of it, working with authors I'd worshiped as a teen, and finding new ones to encourage and publish. ~ Terri Windling

Punk was sort of an angry stance against things that had happened just before, against the pop of glam rock, against progressive rock. Music had become very staid and it was about the playing and people obsessed. Eric Clapton was God and we needed an enema within the art form, and punk did do that. ~ Gary Kemp

The Ruts were a great punk rock band from England whose songs were as excellent as their time together was short. ~ Henry Rollins

All you care about is how punk rock you feel when you wake up in the morning. ~ Lady Gaga

Art is sacred.
Punk rock is freedom.
Expression and right to express is vital.
Anyone can be artistic. ~ Kurt Cobain

The word bollocks seems strong, punk rock, and imposing, but in reality, bollocks is always too tame to make much of an impact. ~ Jennifer Harrison

Will punk rock ever die? Pal, if you have to ask it's dead to you. ~ Henry Rollins

There's a punk-rock attitude, clearly, to 'Hated.' There's even a punk-rock attitude to 'The Hangover,' I think. We start the movie with a Glenn Danzig song. ~ Todd Phillips

Character isn't something you talk about; it's something you show through your actions-through your every day habits. ~ Brian Joyce

You know-portraits are odd things." "How do you figure?" I asked. "Well at the time, that portrait told the whole story. It told the truth. We were a family-a happy family. Now that same portrait just looks like a lie. ~ Brian Joyce

People perceive punk rock in the sense of Sid Vicious, all strung-out, crazy and insane. ~ Hayley Williams

Like punk rock, like Jackson Pollock, like Jack Kerouac, it was truly human, a mix of perfect beauty and cathartic error. ~ Yann Martel

Having experimented in both poetry and prose, I can say that the two are such loaded words. But neither are quite as weighted as the word "poet". I think some people can write poetry their whole lives, and never truly BE a "poet". Whereas I see poets in the wanderers I encounter, the baristas who serve me, and the truckers I, so, love to talk to.To be a poet in my humble opinion is to be a muse of the human experience. I love that I love the idea, that anything can be poetry, it can't be defined. It's a feeling, like punk rock. I'm not one for form or structure. I say if your words are visceral and honest, it's poetry. If you see the beauty of the world and humanity, and you preach it, you're a poet. ~ Mallory Smart

If you ask me, rockabilly has had a raw deal for far too long. People never shunned the blues or jazz the way they do rockabilly. But it's the original punk-rock, and it changed the way people looked at music for ever. ~ Imelda May

I've been trying to challenge myself to be more explicit. I've always liked punk rock and Sonic Youth. I make that music privately, but I've never released it. ~ Sufjan Stevens

Country music is completely punk-rock. It's the original punk-rock. ~ Neko Case

Punk rock is just another word for freedom. ~ Patti Smith

When I was growing up, I really liked punk rock. I liked the sort of people that played really powerful music that was pretty unassuming otherwise - people who didn't dress weird or do much theatrics. ~ Doug Martsch

A lot of punk rock. I listen to various stuff just cuz my friends now listen to a lot of different bands. I listen to a lot of underground stuff like jungle music. ~ Cassie Steele