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Punk Quotes

Browse 742 quotes about Punk.

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Punk Quotes

“The patches are the stories. Hold onto that. And the muddy zigzag of ducktape against the cracked doorglass. There's four kids who sleep here, a nuff for the fingers on each otherses hands. There's room in each of them for one important thing. They're a band. It's not they're in a band. They're a band. Four spikes of ducktape, up and down, like mountain peaks or a sawblade. Every band's got a sign, something to sew on your jacket, gouge on the wall at a show. Four spikes up and down say MEATHEADS, and you picked a fucked window to knock at, tourist. They're the best band in the world.”

FriendsPunkBroken GlassBandsSpikesHardcore Simile
Author:Noah Wareness
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“Next time I'll listen to my heart, Next time I'll be smart. Next time, I'll listen to my heart, Next time, well I'll be smart. That girl could still be mine, But I'm tired of the hurt, I'm tired of trying, I'm tired of the pain, I'm tired of trying, I'm tired of crying. Next time I'll listen to my heart, Next time I'll be smart. Next time, I'll listen to my heart, Next time, well I'll be smart.”

PainHeartbreakHeartachePunkBroken LoveExEx Girlfriend
Author:Ramones
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“Musicians are our real teachers. They are opening us up politically with their lyrics and creatively with experimental, psychedelic music. They share their discoveries and journeys with us. We can’t travel far, no one I know has ever been on an aeroplane. ... whatever they experience, we experience through their songs. It’s true folk music — not played on acoustic guitar by a bearded bloke — but about true-life experiences.”

MusicLearningMusicianPunkPunk RockTeachers And LearnersTrue Teacher
Book:Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
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“I hear a phone ringing through the thick fuzzy air. It's Thunders, asking me to join the Heartbreakers. He says to come over to the rehearsal studios right now. I’m scared but I go anyway. That should be written on my gravestone. She was scared. But she went anyway.”

DeterminationScaredFearlessPunkDetermined SpiritFeel The Fear And Do It AnywayPunksHeartbreakers
Book:Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
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“When I was 18 I gifted my 11-year-old step cousin a copy of Rancid's "...And Out Come the Wolves." Because of this her side of the family blamed me for many things. Caught her smoking at 15? Rancid. Disappeared for a long weekend? The Girl's a Time Bomb. Posed nude for a magazine 3 days after turning 18? They just disowned me. I'm a bad influence it seems. I've been a bad influence for a long time.”

MusicPunkBad Influence
Book:More Snakes Than People: A Rural Gloom Graphic Novel
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“The pain I feel from the Slits ending is worse than splitting up with a boyfriend, my parents divorcing or being chucked out of the Flowers of Romance: this feels like the death of a huge part of myself, two whole thirds gone. Now the Slits are over and Tessa has recovered, I’ve got nowhere to go, nothing to do; I’m cast back into the world like a sycamore seed spinning into the wind. I’m burnt out and my heart is broken. I can’t bear to listen to music. Every time I hear a song I feel physical pain, just to hear instruments is unbearable, it reminds me of what I’ve lost.”

LossDepressionBroken HeartPunkBroken HeartedSlitsFeeling Lost
Book:Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
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“Punks are nihilists who see no tomorrow at all, and dwell in a culture of death music and death imagery. Appropriately, Return focuses on a group of punks who bear names like Trash, Suicide, and Scum, their very names indicating their lack of respect for the world, and themselves. They see themselves as nothing in a world that doesn't value them, and won't survive an apocalypse.”

HorrorNostalgiaPunkAmerican CultureFilm Criticism1980sHorror MoviesHorror Films
Book:Horror Films of the 1980s
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“I decide I’ll just have to be myself. I’m sick of pretending anyway – of policing my words and editing my thoughts. Husband never wants me to talk about the Slits or my ceramics or make rude jokes, I’m losing every ounce of the person I used to be. I know she wasn’t all good, but she wasn’t all bad either. I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not for this bloke who lives miles away across the sea. I’m not going to try and be nice and seductive for him. There are so many people in my life that I’m putting on a front for, I don’t need one more. If he doesn’t like me for who I am, forget it.”

Be YourselfPunkStay True To YourselfBe RealLoss Of SelfStay True To Who You AreBe Truthful
Book:Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
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“Kids in tje East had also grown up with a genuine sense of fear that the world might actually come to an end during their lifetime. That it probably would in fact. For some this fueled nihilistic feelings - one reason Toster from Die Anderen, for instance, never got deeply political was because he stopped giving a shit.”

PunkCold WarBerlinBerlin WallEast GermanyDdrGdrEast Berlin
Book:Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall
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“And as the Stasi began to pay more and more attention to the new network, they made the same mistake they had when trying to break up the punk scene a few years before: they sought to identify leaders and focus on undermining them. The Stasi assumed every organisation had a top-down structure like the Stasi, like the Party, like the dictatorship.”

PunkBerlinEast GermanyDdrGdrEast BerlinStasi
Book:Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall
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“Punker, what's compassion for a world this far gone? The streets don't give a fuck. It's a bummer, your care slides down its target like beads of rain on rock. There's no aquifer for any shit like this. Where does compassion go and can it be returned? You're Donn in this world, with the staff and the purple band. The artificer. Walking the bandoned suites of hell and your eyeballs thinking, what can be saved? Not their gear but its aspects. You started kung fu way later than the rest, and before that you saw compassion in a history spiel. Now it keeps washing up on your shore. Giving a shit might be made of parts, it might be made solo. It might be an invasive species or not. Punks evolved from dinos too. Not even cross time and distance. But the spikes on their heads are the same.”

CompassionPunkPaleontologyDiyAnomieNinjutsu
Author:Noah Wareness
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“I've got so used to my life being challenging and fraught with danger that I don't question it any more. Whether I’m knocking on the door of a hardcore sex shop, walking through suburban streets being verbally abused and spat on, or being threatened on the tube, I don't give in. I don’t dress normally to have an easy life. The pilgrimage down the King’s Road to get to the Shop (Sex: everyone calls it ‘the Shop’), the place I want to hang out and buy stuff, is one of the scariest things I do — running the gauntlet of teds who want to kill people like me — but nothing will stop me looking the way I want. It’s a commitment.”

DeterminationPunkViolence Against WomenFashion Statement1970sCommitment And AttitudeBeing Young
Book:Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
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“Palmolive wrote the lyrics to ‘Newtown’ too. The song was originally called ‘Drugtown’, but I changed it to ‘Newtown’, thinking about all the new towns that are springing up around the edges of London, like Milton Keynes and Crawley. The young people growing up there are so bored, they take loads of drugs and drive around really fast or beat each other up at football matches, then they get up and commute to their dull jobs on Monday morning. Palmolive made up these great words like ‘televisina’ and ‘footballina’ as drug names, I think only a foreigner could do that.”

PunkLyricsLinguisticsSlitsLyrics In A SongPunksLinguistic Beauty
Book:Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
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“For a short waterfall it is surprisingly noisy and too close to the car park for him to risk shouting over it so they stand there in silence observing it. Obviously she wants to and he finds that he can tolerate the distraction, using the time to check her out. Posh punk, he thinks, hard to see which is dominant. Frayed denim skirt and black leggings under a very classy cashmere coat. She trawled a high-end branch of Oxfam or she's genuinely indigent with a good source of hand-me-downs. Whichever, she has a near-perfect profile and pink hair.”

PunkPoshWaterfallCashmereCharlotte KaufmannHand Me DownsAdam Maxwell
Book:Badlands
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“I rush home and put the record on ['Horses’ by Patti Smith]. It hurts through stream of consciousness, careers into poetry and dissolves into sex. [...] She’s a private person who dares to let go in front of everyone, puts herself out there and risks falling flat on her face. Up until now girls have been controlled and restrained. Patti Smith is abandoned. [...] Listening to Horses unlocks an idea for me - girls’ sexuality can be on their own terms, for their own pleasure or creative work, not just for exploitation or to get a man. [...] Hearing Patti Smith be sexual, building to an organic crescendo, whilst leading a band, is so exciting. It’s emancipating. If I can take a quarter or even eighth of what she has and not give a shit about making a fool of myself, maybe I can still do something with my life.”

MusicMusicianPunkNever Give UpBe FreePatti SmithDon T Give A DamnDon T Give A Fuck
Book:Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
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“Big Jason walked into the club, stared at the band beginning their sound check and quickly walked over to the bar. Lily looked up from her rinsing and smiled. "Big Jason Gulliver, back in town. Raquel said Godzilla returned to Tokyo, I wondered how soon you'd drop by here". "Front me a soda, Lily. How's the night club racket?" Jason barked over the noisy band. "Guys still hitting on me, including your stupid friend King Steve", Lily shot a jet of soda pop from her beverage gun into a water glass. Jason chortled. "He's slow on the draw. You're a fuckin' dyke but a cool fuckin' dyke. I don't even care if you sleep with my girl". "Why thank you, Caveman", Lily smiled, handing him the soda with a cherry on top.”

PunkPunk RockLesbianismBartenders
Book:Every Bitch For Himself
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“My interest in comics was scribbled over with a revived, energized passion for clothes, records, and music. I'd wandered in late to the punk party in 1978, when it was already over and the Sex Pistols were history. I'd kept my distance during the first flush of the new paradigm, when the walls of the sixth-form common room shed their suburban-surreal Roger Dean Yes album covers and grew a fresh new skin of Sex Pistols pictures, Blondie pinups, Buzzcocks collages, Clash radical chic. As a committed outsider, I refused to jump on the bandwagon of this new musical fad, which I'd written off as some kind of Nazi thing after seeing a photograph of Sid Vicious sporting a swastika armband. I hated the boys who'd cut their long hair and binned their crappy prog albums in an attempt to join in. I hated pretty much everybody without discrimination, in one way or another, and punk rockers were just something else to add to the shit list. But as we all know, it's zealots who make the best converts. One Thursday night, I was sprawled on the settee with Top of the Pops on the telly when Poly Styrene and her band X-Ray Spex turned up to play their latest single: an exhilarating sherbet storm of raw punk psychedelia entitled "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" By the time the last incandescent chorus played out, I was a punk. I had always been a punk. I would always be a punk. Punk brought it all together in one place for me: Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels were punk. Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class, Dennis Potter, and The Prisoner were punk too. A Clockwork Orange was punk. Lindsay Anderson's If ... was punk. Monty Python was punk. Photographer Bob Carlos Clarke's fetish girls were punk. Comics were punk. Even Richmal Crompton's William books were punk. In fact, as it turned out, pretty much everything I liked was punk. The world started to make sense for the first time since Mosspark Primary. New and glorious constellations aligned in my inner firmament. I felt born again. The do-your-own-thing ethos had returned with a spit and a sneer in all those amateurish records I bought and treasured-even though I had no record player. Singles by bands who could often barely play or sing but still wrote beautiful, furious songs and poured all their young hearts, experiences, and inspirations onto records they paid for with their dole money. If these glorious fuckups could do it, so could a fuckup like me. When Jilted John, the alter ego of actor and comedian Graham Fellows, made an appearance on Top of the Pops singing about bus stops, failed romance, and sexual identity crisis, I was enthralled by his shameless amateurism, his reduction of pop music's great themes to playground name calling, his deconstruction of the macho rock voice into the effeminate whimper of a softie from Sheffield. This music reflected my experience of teenage life as a series of brutal setbacks and disappointments that could in the end be redeemed into art and music with humor, intelligence, and a modicum of talent. This, for me, was the real punk, the genuine anticool, and I felt empowered. The losers, the rejected, and the formerly voiceless were being offered an opportunity to show what they could do to enliven a stagnant culture. History was on our side, and I had nothing to lose. I was eighteen and still hadn't kissed a girl, but perhaps I had potential. I knew I had a lot to say, and punk threw me the lifeline of a creed and a vocabulary-a soundtrack to my mission as a comic artist, a rough validation. Ugly kids, shy kids, weird kids: It was okay to be different. In fact, it was mandatory.”

PunkPunk RockPunks
Book:Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human
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“Ari [Up] was an artist and an artist needs love more than anyone, she needed loads, but I don’t know if she got enough on a one-to-one level. Everything came second to her music, even family. You have to be selfish to be an artist; your family just have to accept that. It’s not personal, it’s not that you don’t love them. What an artist gives their family isn’t routine and their constant presence, they give vitality and ideas, independence and creative thinking.”

ArtistMusicPunkArtists LifeSlitsMusic Is My LifeAll You Need Is LovePunks
Book:Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
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