Quotes & Sayings About Punk

I would definitely say the Oakland Raiders are the punk rock band of football. — Billie Joe Armstrong

There was a moment when Prince did rock & roll with a sponge-y seductive sound. I think that's what was in our head for 'Get On Your Boots.' But actually, the song is much more punk rock. — Bono

I got out of that immediately was that now, all of a sudden, rock music had become a spectator sport, that corporate labels and their bands were the new establishment, and punk was there to fight them the way the activist hippies must have fought what the establishment must have been ten years before. And it was interesting to see the reactions in different parts of the country. — Jello Biafra

When you step in the ring, your arms are just too short to box with God — CM Punk

The genetic stage of a gene pool can be identified by the personality characteristics of the local God. Jehovah of Genesis is a low-level barbarian macho punk God. He boastfully claims to have created the heaven and the stars and the world, but provides no technical details or replicable blueprints. His preoccupations, whims, anxieties, jealousies, rules and hatred of women are primitive mammalian brain. His petty prides are primate. — Timothy Leary

I was in my early twenties and I was, to be quite honest, a bit of a punk. A swaggering entitled straight white guy who hadn't but a lot of thought into what it might be like to be anything other than a straight white guy. Because when you're a straight white guy, you don't *have* to think about that ... — Patrick Rothfuss

People get hired based off of a certain look or something like that and they have no intention of paying their dues or even respecting the business. It's not a good idea to do that. — CM Punk

It was the freedom to experiment that made this experiment called Freedom possible. — Justin Sirois

I think English punk died in '79 or '80. Maybe '82 at the latest. As far as American punk goes, it wasn't the same as English punk. It wasn't a working-class movement that was protesting the conditions under which this class had to work. I don't think American punk ever died. — Greg Graffin

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

You know how they say Black Flag got in a van, and they brought punk rock to the world? The Strokes got on a bus, and they brought "downtown cool" to the world. Along with the Internet, they were changing everything, not just music. They were changing attitudes. The Strokes were making New York travel with them. I saw kids in Connecticut and Maine and Philadelphia and DC looking like they had just been drinking on Avenue A all night. Sixteen-year-old kids in white belts and Converse Chuck Taylors with the greasy hair - hair that had been clean a week ago. Those kids had probably never even smelled the inside of a thrift store before Is This It came out. They found a band that they wanted to be like. They found their band. APRIL — Lizzy Goodman

That little punk," Zeus grumbled. "Prometheus armed the cockroaches." Next to him, the goddess Hera said, "Uh, what?" "Nothing," Zeus muttered. He yelled to his guards: "Find Prometheus and get him in here. NOW! — Rick Riordan

I made the big turnaround in the early Nineties when I started hearing all the tenth generation punk bands like Green Day and Offspring and all those people. It just made me fall in love with punk again and remember my roots, and since that time I've always wanted to do more of that kind of music again. — Jane Wiedlin

Punk came along and grunge made guitar solos uncool. — David Pajo

Vivienne Westwood really inspires me. I love her punk ethos. — Charli XCX

I formed a band when I was about 13, and we all listened to punk - or what we thought was punk! — Tim Gane

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. — Geoff Rickly

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

I pretty much grew up when punk was big in the UK. The Sex Pistols were heroes for me. I used to run around like Johnny Rotten. I had a jacket like his. — Gavin Rossdale

Woody Weatherman showed me two beats, the "do do dat, do do dat" rock beat and the "ooh at ooh at ooh at" punk beat and other than that I was pretty limited. I had just gotten a drum kit for Christmas, which I was stoked about so I was ready to go. Back then, the prerequisite for playing punk rock drums wasn't very high, it was really pretty generic as I'm sure you can imagine. — Reed Mullin

I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music. — Kurt Cobain

The fashion look of teens and twentysomethings -once so cutting edge- is now, like most of the music played on the radio, a matter of routine. Safe, tired, everywhere. — Phil Strongman

You'd figure he'd go do something with his life, like maybe he could enlist and actually become a marine! — CM Punk

It seems like the powers that be are really trying to separate everything and really divide the genres and divide the trends. If you're metal and you don't sound like Slayer would sound now, then you're not metal. If you're punk rock and you don't sound like and preach about what The Sex Pistols would have preached about back in the day, then you're not really punk rock. — Cristian Machado

Who would ever want to read a novel about a punk and a drunk! Everybody knew a couple or a dozen; they were not to be taken seriously; nuisances and trouble-makers, nothing more; like queers and fairies, people were bell-sick of them; whatever ailed them, that was their funeral; who cared? - life presented a thousand things more important to be written about than misfits and failures. — Charles Jackson

If Triple H asked you to jump off a bridge, would you? Because I think that's good for business. — CM Punk

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

These people want you to quit just like CM Punk did. — Stephanie McMahon

I needed a distraction. A drink, a good tumble, anything - even this sure-to-be- trouble punk show. — Alexandra Martin

I did enjoy the broadcasting work of King, Punk and Josh Mathews last Monday on Raw. Josh is a hard working young man who does his homework and he did well with his opportunity to sit at the grown up table on Raw. — Jim Ross

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

In 50 years, your grandchildren will be asking you where you were when CM Punk beat the Undertaker's streak! — CM Punk

Straight edge means I'm better than you. — CM Punk

I'm going to hell. I'm pretty sure she'd going to drag me there herself. — Penelope Douglas

Luck? Good luck? GM, the last time I checked, luck is for losers. — CM Punk

I like to wear a "Do Not Disturb" sign around my neck so that little kids can't tell me knock-knock jokes. "Hey, how ya doin'? Knock-knock." "Read the sign, punk!" — Mitch Hedberg

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. — Leonardo DiCaprio

We were at the dark end of the L.A. punk scene, and that scene was full-on and violent and aggressive and wild and intense. — Flea

Do I want an ice cream bar with my name on it? You're DAMN right! — CM Punk

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

You know how long's the universe. It's seven million freeways side by side. You know how high. So high the moon just falls. But little punks, you still know the hardcore of the universe. It's cause you're hardcore too. You're made of pure universe, under your bones. And nothing ever starts shit by meaning to. We meant to break down the amerikan dream throwing bottles. All we broke was bottles. What worked was one stolen handful of flax seed. All ages shows in the highschool parkade, and the keys to the bandroom door. Their dream was a joke anyway. What worked was a nother joke. — Noah Wareness

When you were a teenager in Colorado, the way to be a punk rocker was to rip on Reagan and Bush and what they were doing and talk about how everyone in Colorado's a redneck with a gun and all this stuff. — Trey Parker

Everybody wasn't always wasted. Why is punk rock about getting wasted? Isn't it punk rock to be sober and change the world? I thought it was about challenging capitalism? How are you going to challenge capitalism if you're wasted? — Kathleen Hanna

I'm not a critic. I'm not a journalist. I'm not a philosopher. Arguing that punk has run its course is like saying painting ran its course after the Renaissance. Punk is an idea. It's freedom. And it'll be around 200 years from now for the people who want it. — Patti Smith

Misha, my best friend who got me into bed and fucked me with a lie. — Penelope Douglas

The jocks that used to stuff me into a locker when I was a punk rocker are my best buddies now. — Jonathan Evison

The glow dies down, and she's standing at the end of my bed
the one who's been following me around leaving feather messages. I take in the torn fishnets, plaid mini-kilt, shiny, riveted breastplate with leather straps at the sides and a worn Great Temolo decal near the left shoulder. Her wings are a crazy black-and-white-checkered pattern, like they've been spray-painted at a body shop to look like hipster sneakers. — Libba Bray

I was such a punk. — Patti Davis

We found that if you played a bunch of punk singles in a row, people would dance like crazy and then get worn out and go somewhere else in the house. And if you played reggae all the time, people ended up leaning against the walls and nodding their head. But if you mixed it up, the floor got more and more packed, and the energy from the two types of music seemed to feed into each other, and the adrenaline from the punk, and the seductive sway of the reggae seemed to fit together. — Dave Wakeling

I was really into punk. I was 11 years old; I had a blue mohican. — Ben Lovett

I hate Keanu Reeves. I think he's a punk. — Troy Duffy

Have you guys ever ghost hunted in Hawaii? No? Well, I have this fat friend ... I shouldn't say fat, that might offend him, but he's Samoan and claims to have seen ghosts. — CM Punk

I fancy myself as being very good at Guitar Hero. I really don't play any other videogames. I kind of fell in love with Guitar Hero the first time I played it, and went out and bought a system for it. — CM Punk

Nobody got Punk'd and he was still in his season for that show when we were filming. So the kids were very aware that it was filming and that was his show and they were very much on the lookout for that. — Piper Perabo

I'd always wanted to make a record with Jim Dickinson, and I'd known about his boys for years, ... He reminded me that when they were 13 or 14 years old they had a punk rock band and I'd called him and wanted to make a record with them then. — John Hiatt

Street culture is punk, hip-hop, skateboarding, surfing, graffiti. It's like a massive global culture that is all tied together. But for so many years it was very geographic. — Jeffrey Deitch

Punk rock, when I was a part of it, was called 'the underground.' There was something very attractive in all the hidden places, the hidden histories. — Mary Harron

Everyone knew that girls who admitted to liking girls stopped being whatever they were before and became a cross between a lumberjack and a punk-goth-anarchist.
- Adena Galinksy, USA (p. 38) — Robyn Ochs

[Country Music] is the final destination for many punk rockers [ ... ] Rockabilly is the mid-point and then [they] end up at Country [ ... ] There's purity to that music and I think that appeals to a lot of punk rock people - the precision, the purity, and the directness of Country Music. — John C. Reilly

If I do a certain number of ads, I have to do a personal project in between, just for my own sanity. I still consider myself a punk-rock kid. — Aaron Ruell

Making a big fat deal out of anything is absurd. It makes much more sense to go after life with a sense of, "Why not?" instead of a furrowed brow. One of the best things I ever did was make my motto "I just wanna see what I can get away with." It takes all the pressure off, puts the punk rock attitude in, and reminds me that life is but a game. — Jen Sincero

What characterized the whole punk scene for me in 1977 was there was no racism or sexism. It was an anarchy of -isms, and a matter of abolishing it all. — Chrissie Hynde

[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. — Michael Stipe

I wore makeup when I was at school, and I wore makeup when glam started. I started wearing it again when punk started. I've always been drawn to wearing it. It's partly ritualistic, partly theatrical and partly just because I think I look better with it on. — Robert Smith

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. — Noah Wareness

Punk was originally about creating new, important, energetic music that would hopefully threaten the status quo and the stupidity of the 1970s. — Jello Biafra

Punk had picked the locks, sluiced out into the grid. — Garth Risk Hallberg

And some people have less star appeal than others, but sometimes they shine far brighter than those with more. — Mickey Leigh

To me punk rock is thinking outside of the box, outside of the program, outside the establishment. — Madonna Ciccone

Fix him so I can break him again! — CM Punk

I live in Nashville, and I don't know how many people there would call me country. I really started in punk and anti-folk, but one of the reasons I originally gravitated towards country music is because most of those songs only use three chords. That was the easiest place for me to start, but I'm always trying to expand what I do. — Caitlin Rose

Sometimes, if you want to be happy, you've got to run away to Bath and marry a punk rocker. Sometimes you've got to dye your hair cobalt blue, or wander remote islands in Sicily, or cook your way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, for no very good reason. — Julie Powell

Someday, if we won, if humanity survived, we'd be in the history books. Me and Jake and Rachel and Cassie and Tobias and Ax. They'd be household names, like generals from World War II or the Civil War. Patton and Eisenhower, Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee. Kids would study us in school. Bored, probably.
And then the teacher would tell the story of Marco. I'd be a part of history. What I was about to do. Some kid would laugh. Some kid would say, "Cold, man. That was really cold."
I had to do it, kid. It was a war. It's the whole point, you stupid, smug, smirking little jerk! Don't you get it?
It was the whole point. We hurt the innocent in order to stop the evil. Innocent Hork-Bajir. Innocent Taxxons. Innocent human-Controllers. How else to stop the Yeerks? How else to win?
No choice, you punk. We did what we had to do.
"Cold, man. The Marco dude? He was just cold. — Katherine Applegate

I would, but I know where that hand's been. — CM Punk

Where I grew up, I could be a punk rocker and a jock. But in college, it became apparent that those two worlds didn't mix. When I brought my guitar back to school after Thanksgiving break, a friend handed me his bass and said, 'Listen to the Ramones.' — Jeff Ament

There's one thing you're better at than I am, and that's kissing Vince McMahon's ass. You're as good as kissing Vince's ass as Hulk Hogan was. -To John Cena — CM Punk

Don't punk out and don't quit. — Ben Horowitz

It's exciting to be able to do something completely independent without anybody challenging it, and it's a big part of the reason why I'm enjoying doing the stand-up comedy, is I'm able to go out and interact with people one-on-one after the show. It's very punk-rock. — Tom Green

Punk [rock] seemed like rock 'n' roll music utterly without the music. — Steve Winwood

On the road, the WWE is a family. The divas are my sisters, and like any big brother, I don't want creeps around my little sisters. — CM Punk

The new album is a childhood dream come true. Got to sing with Ronnie Spector, got to cover a bunch of songs that were influential in drawing a line between the punk form and original rock and roll. — Jerry Only

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

There's not much music I'll listen to if it doesn't have pretty heavy swing. Rhythm is so important. Punk rock would have more power and feeling if it had swing. — Greg Ginn

My music is pretty honest. I can't rap on science fiction. Punk is from the street. — Rick James

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. — Stephen Malkmus

In Paranoid Park there is this Punk girl that keeps looking straight into The camera when she speaks, It's like she's speaking to us. — James Franco

So ... have you ever thought about dyeing your hair punk-rocker-chick black? As I'm sure you've heard, I have a thing for brunettes and always avoid blondes."
"I've heard. And no."
"Too bad. Because you're making me rethink my stance about doing my friends' exes." I snorted, not even trying to hide my ... incredulity? Surely I wasn't amused.
"Your making me rethink my stance on cold-blooded homicide — Gena Showalter

In a way, all recorded music is reduced to the same level, no matter what it is. You find it in the store, you put it on and, "Oh, that's not cool. That's gangsta rap. That's white supremacist punk." But in a way, the content is removed from the intention of the people that made it. That's the commercial level of music. — Eyvind Kang

I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't use drugs. That may be boring for some people, but that's just me. That's how I live my life. — CM Punk

All my teenage years my punk was hip-hop - I just hated pop music. — Gustav Ejstes

If something sucks, I've always been completely vocal about it, and I've been punished many, many times because of that. But I don't think I'd be in the spot I'm in right now if I wasn't me. I've always just been me. — CM Punk

All those years we'd spent learning these chops, and all those gigs in Germany where you'd play all night, and along comes punk. It has nothing to do with that. A lot of people went out of business. — Nick Lowe

Marriage felt like a fading American institution, as relevant to me as the Elks Club. Plus, I considered myself punk rock, and punk rockers don't believe in boring societal conventions like marriage. We prefer boring societal conventions like punk rock. — Michael Ian Black

I lived at the Gramercy Park Hotel for about 10 years. It was terrific. It was a pleasantly run-down hotel of the '70s and '80s with a mix of older, rent-controlled apartment dwellers, Europeans and new wave and punk bands. The room service was great, the hamburger was terrific, and they had a doctor who made house calls. — Paul Shaffer

I do love dance music. I love Daft Punk. I mean, I was a child in the '80s, so bands like the Eurythmics and just so many great '80s bands were dance bands, but they had the whole soul thing happening, too. — Corin Tucker

To love one child and to love all children, whether living or dead -somewhere these two loves come together. To love a no-good but humble punk and to love an honest man who believes himself to be an honest man -somewhere these, too, come together. — Marguerite Duras

People always said that I hated punk, and that really wasn't true. It was glossed over for many years that I was the guy who found the Tubes and signed them to A&M. English punk was a revolution. — Rick Wakeman

To John Cena after the fans kept throwing his shirt back in the ring : They didn't throw my shirt back. — CM Punk

The New York Dolls did not think of themselves as punk rock. There was no such term at the time. They were just another band in what was called the New York scene. — Todd Rundgren

I think that what's perceived as punk out in shopping malls or in chain stores or on MTV has almost nothing to do with what punk is about. — Jello Biafra