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Kim Gordon

Kim Gordon Books

Musician

Kim Gordon, born on April 28, 1953, is an American musician best known for her role in the punk rock band Sonic Youth. Her musical career began in the late 1970s, and she co-founded Sonic Youth with her husband Thurston Moore, which had a profound impact on post-punk and alternative rock.

Girl in a Band

A source page for quotes linked to Kim Gordon.

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Girl in a Band: A Memoir

A source page for quotes linked to Kim Gordon.

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Related Quotes

“Writing about New York is hard. Not because memories intersect and overlap, because of course they do. Not because incidents and times mix with others, because that happens too. Not because I didn't fall in love with New York, because even though I was lonely and poor, no place had ever made me feel more at home. It is because knowing what I know now, it's hard to write about a love story with a broken heart.”

Love Heartbreak New York City

Book:Girl in a Band

Source: Girl in a Band

“When people ask me what L.A. was like in the sixties, I tell them there wasn't as much terrible stucco as there is today: no mini malls with their approximation of Spanish two-story buildings, no oversized SUVs bulging out of parking-space lines. What used to say "Spanish-style" is now something diseased looking. Nobody seems to know how to stucco anymore.”

Funny Sonic Youth 60s L A Stucco

Book:Girl in a Band

Source: Girl in a Band

“[...] to overcome my own hypersensitivity, I had no choice but to turn fearless.”

Inspirational Music Sonic Youth

Book:Girl in a Band

Source: Girl in a Band

“I remember how the book talked about the pressure to please and be perfect that every woman falls into and then projects onto her daughter. Nothing is ever good enough. No woman can ever outrun what she has to do. No one can be all things - a mother, a good partner, a lover, as well as a competitor in the workplace.”

Feminism Sonic Youth

Book:Girl in a Band

Source: Girl in a Band

“Hardcore groups were singing songs about Ronald Reagan. I wasn't interested in this and preferred to sing about the darkness shimmering beneath the shiny quilt of American pop culture. I suppose you could say that Sonic Youth was always trying to defy people's expectations.”

Political Expectations Hardcore Sonic Youth Kim Gordon Ronal Reagan

Book:Girl in a Band

Source: Girl in a Band

“I've never been good with structure—doing assignments for the sake of them or doing things I'm supposed to do.”

Creativity Structure Sonic Youth Kim Gordon

Author:Kim Gordon

“It wasn't some Puritan thing. Straight-edge was asking adherents to take control of their lives, not to be blind consumers, and not to be tricked into thinking that drinking and drugs were cool since in fact they were the tools of a previous generation”

Alcohol Consumerism Drugs Straight Edge Soberness

Author:Kim Gordon

“No one ever questions the disorder behind her tarantula LA glamour – sociopathy, narcissism – because it’s good rock and roll, good entertainment! I have a low tolerance for manipulative, egomaniacal behaviour, and usually have to remind myself that the person might be mentally ill.”

Persons Might Behinds Rocks Lows Ill Entertainment Tolerance Disorder Narcissism Behaviour Rock And Roll Glamour Manipulative Mentally Ill Tarantulas

Author:Kim Gordon

“For me performing has a lot to do with being fearless.”

Fearless Performing

Book:Girl in a Band

Source: Girl in a Band

“In retrospect, it's ridiculous that anyone saw me as a fashion icon, since all I was trying to do was to dumb down my middle-class look by messing with my hair. Throughout the eighties I was invariably half-sure and half-confident about whatever it was I wore…Still, I've always believed—still do—that the radical is far more interesting when it looks benign and ordinary on the outside.”

Trying Looks Stills Interesting Half Class Saws Middle Fashion Hair Ordinary Ridiculous Radical Dumb Middle Class Eighty Always Believe Icons Retrospect Benign Fashion Icon

Book:Girl in a Band

Source: Girl in a Band

“Culturally we don't allow women to be as free as they would like, because that is frightening. We either shun those women or deem them crazy… But being that woman who pushes the boundaries means you also bring in less desirable aspects of yourself. At the end of the day, women are expected to hold up the world, not annihilate it.”

World Mean Ends Crazy Aspect Expected Boundaries The End Of The Day Frightening Desirable

Book:Girl in a Band

Source: Girl in a Band

“When I was young, there was never any space for me to get attention of my own that wasn't negative. Art, and the practice of making art, was the only space that was mine alone, where I could be anyone and do anything, where just by using my head and my hands I could cry, or laugh, or get pissed off.”

Art Hands Young My Own Space Attention Practice Laughing Cry Mines Negative Pissed Off

Author:Kim Gordon

“It's hard to write about a love story with a broken heart.”

Writing Heart Hard Stories Broken Love Story

Book:Girl in a Band

Source: Girl in a Band

“There is something wonderful about singing and writing music, I think there is something special about creativity and the ability humans have in that area.”

Thinking Writing Humans Ability Creativity Wonderful Special Singing Areas Something Special Writing Music

Author:Kim Gordon

“At the end of the day, women are expected to hold up the world, not annihilate it.”

World Ends Expected The End Of The Day

Book:Girl in a Band

Source: Girl in a Band

“Someone once wrote that in between the lives we lead and the lives we fantasize about living is the place in our heads where most of us actually live.”

Book:Girl in a Band: A Memoir

Source: Girl in a Band: A Memoir

“You can't be a strong or cool woman and be represented except in a harsh way, looking mean and cold and hard. It's like reverse sexism.”

Way Mean Hard Strong Cold Sexism Reverse Harsh

Author:Kim Gordon

“Everyone's so interior now, they're not really looking around them. They're on their phones.”

Phones Interiors

Author:Kim Gordon

“In The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson turns 'making the personal public' into a romantic, intellectual wet dream. A gorgeous book, inventive, fearless, and full of heart.”

Heart Book Dream Turns Intellectual Fearless Wet Gorgeous Nelson Maggie Wet Dreams

Author:Kim Gordon

“There's the added element of adrenaline if you're performing. You're aware of spatial relationships and the music.”

Ifs Elements Performing Adrenaline Spatial

Author:Kim Gordon

“Many designers are gay men making clothes for women. Sometimes I think fashion is more of a conversation between men than it is for women.”

Thinking Men Sometimes Fashion Gay Conversation Clothes Designer Gay Men

Author:Kim Gordon

“Clothes are signifiers and symbols of how people communicate with each other.”

People Clothes Communicate Symbols

Author:Kim Gordon

“The clothes in themselves are empty. But what they throw off and what clothes mean as signifiers is incredibly interesting - to see what people do with it. That's more interesting to me than flipping through a magazine or seeing the fall look.”

People Looks Mean Fall Interesting Seeing Clothes Empty Magazines

Author:Kim Gordon

“I think of myself as unconventional. I maybe always had a problem with authority, like a stubbornness about what's expected - despite wanting to get some recognition through performing - but also not always wanting to do the expected thing.”

Thinking Problem Authority Expected Despite Recognition Performing Stubbornness Unconventional

Author:Kim Gordon

“You're always going to feel like you're catching up, and part of that is just balancing work and motherhood and the whole feeling of needing to please, which I do think girls and women feel more than men.”

Thinking Men Feels Whole Feelings Girl Like You Please Motherhood Catching Catching Up

Author:Kim Gordon

“I'm aware of how pop culture really infiltrates your expectations in a way that even if you think you're savvy about pop culture, it's so hard not to have these expectations of what a relationship should be. So I constantly feel like I have to bat those expectations down.”

Ifs Thinking Way Feels Should Hard Culture Expectations Pops Bats Pop Culture Savvy

Author:Kim Gordon

“The love for a child is more an unconditional sort of love ... Although some parents are really narcissistic. In general, I think there is an expectation that love will be unconditional, but obviously it's not - even after living with someone for years.”

Thinking Years Children Parent Expectations Unconditional Narcissistic

Author:Kim Gordon

“I tend to want to listen to melancholy music, but sometimes if you're feeling too sad, you can't.”

Ifs Want Sometimes Feelings Melancholy Listen To Me

Author:Kim Gordon

“No one talks about woman power. The Spice Girls - they're masquerading as little girls. It's repulsive.”

Littles Girl Spices Women Power Spice Girls

Author:Kim Gordon

“I always wanted to rebel.”

Author:Kim Gordon

“Women are natural anarchists...”

Natural Anarchist

Author:Kim Gordon

“I was talking to somebody about the L.A. hardcore scene, and they were saying that it was hard for them to picture punk rock at the beach. Like, the aesthetic didn't mix or something - black forms in the sand.”

Black Scene Beach Sand Aesthetic Punk Punk Rock Hardcore

Author:Kim Gordon

“I'm really nostalgic for Malibu area because I've spent so much time there. People don't think of California as having a history.”

People Thinking Nostalgic

Author:Kim Gordon

“L.A. prides itself on newness or being the last frontier or just not liking old things and tearing them down to build new things.”

Author:Kim Gordon

“Malibu history is interesting to me. My mom's family was one of the early families in California, so there's history going back to the 1840s or '50s. They came over in the Gold Rush, actually. I have all this guilt about raising my daughter in the East. Coco's very anti-California. It's her way of rebelling.”

Interesting Daughter Gold Guilt My Daughter

Author:Kim Gordon

“Recently some work I made could be seen as feminist art or work that relates to the body. That's just what I'm feeling - like it needs to be done.”

Art Done Feelings Feminist

Author:Kim Gordon

“Political art never goes away. I started watching The West Wing show recently and I'm actually learning about how the government works in a way. It's kind of embarrassing.”

Kind Art Political Embarrassing

Author:Kim Gordon

“Twitter reminds me of an era in French literature - Emile Zola and Honoré de Balzac - and the beginning of modernity and gossip. They had these fashion magazines of the time on display with all of the Emile Zola references.”

Literature Fashion Gossip

Author:Kim Gordon

“Fashion, at modern time, was actually a way for women to go out in the world. There was one painting of a woman sitting at a café, drinking a beer by herself and kind of pretending to read but really watching people, that sort of thing. It fascinated me.”

People World Kind Modern Fashion Painting Drinking Beer Pretending

Author:Kim Gordon

“I really like Olivier Assayas filmmaking. He always has this global - economy thing going on.”

Economy Filmmaking

Author:Kim Gordon

“I always felt like an outsider to the music world in a certain way. There was so much less of an art culture in L.A. - and particularly in the South Bay.”

World Art Culture Outsiders

Author:Kim Gordon

“I always think of baseball as so existential. Like, you're just out there in a field, in a big expanse of green grass.”

Thinking Like You Baseball Existential

Author:Kim Gordon

“I really want to start playing basketball. Basketball and ping-pong are my two forms of exercise.”

Exercise Basketball

Author:Kim Gordon

“My parents lived by Rancho Park. And my mom, later in life, got into playing golf. She and her male cronies would get up at five in the morning and sneak onto the back nine. I kind of just started getting into it. For a long time I was really puzzled by why people liked it.”

People Kind Long Parent Morning Mom Golf My Mom Sneak

Author:Kim Gordon

“Because our daughters have school and it's just such a hassle going down to New York all the time, we can really only go on the weekends, we kind of... Steve came up here and worked out stuff for the second half of the record.”

Kind School Mother Stuff Half Records New York Goes On Daughter Weekend Our Daughter Hassle

Author:Kim Gordon

“I mean, who made up all the rules in the culture? Men-white male corporate society. So why wouldnt a woman want to rebel against that?”

Men Want Mean Made Culture White Males Corporate Rebel Women Want

Author:Kim Gordon

“People pay to see others believe in themselves.”

People Believe Pay

Author:Kim Gordon

“Rap music is really good when you're traumatized.”

Music Is Rap Rap Music

Author:Kim Gordon

“I just happened to start playing music for the conceptual ideas.”

Ideas Happened Playing Music

Author:Kim Gordon

“And then, I was thinking of doing a record just like starting with voice, because I did this one song that was just kind of a cappella, and I did it for this art piece I did where people could come and play music to go with a voice.”

People Thinking Kind Art Play Song Voice Records Pieces Starting

Author:Kim Gordon

About the Author

Born: April 28, 1953
Known for: Musician
Quotes: 64

Related Topics

Thinking People Kind Sonic Youth Art Culture Ifs Mean Fashion Hard

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

Girl in a BandRelated source material

Girl in a Band: A MemoirRelated source material

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