Jello Biafra Quotes

One way of working is just bring a group of totally different musicians together and encourage them to stick to their guns, not to do the thing that normally happens in a working situation where everyone homogenizes and concedes certain points - so eventually they're all playing in roughly the same style. I wanted quite the opposite of that. I wanted them to accent their styles, so that they pulled away. So there would be a kind of space in the middle where I could operate, and attempt to make these things coalesce in some way. In fact quite a lot of my stuff has arisen from that.

I can listen to all different sorts of music. I don't really care about The Next Big Thing.

It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. Stop settling for what's good enough and start creating art that matters.

If you want to be different nowadays, just act normal.

One of the saddest things about conformity is the ghastly sort of non-conformity it breeds; the noisy protesting, the aggressive rebelliousness, the rigid counter-fetishism.

Don't blend in; instead, clash with your environment. Stand out. Be different. That's what will draw attention to your ideas. Nothing has intrinsic attention-grabbing power by itself. The power lies in how much something stands out from its context.

Be different; be unique; be yourself.

Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it's delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative.

I think anything you do that's different, that doesn't take the typical approach, invites differing opinions.

From the time I was a kid, I'd never joined groups. I hated high school groups. I hung out with hippies, musical people. I hung out with whomever I found compelling and interesting and smart. And I continued to do that throughout my life.

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A REBEL. I NEVER DO THINGS THE WAY THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DONE. EITHER I GO IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OR I CREATE A NEW DIRECTION FOR MYSELF, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE RULES ARE OR WHAT SOCIETY SAYS.

Nobody wants to feel they're not a rebel.

I am showing solidarity while being different. Or if you prefer, I am being different while being in solidarity.

I write movies about mavericks, about people who break rules, and I don't like movies about people who are pulverised for being mavericks.

I allow myself to be understood as a colorful fragment in a drab world.

Having to be different is the same trap as having to be the same.

Imposing an alleged uniform general method upon everybody breeds mediocrity in all but the very exceptional. And measuring originality by deviation from the mass breeds eccentricity in them.

I didn't set out to be unusual or different. I just wanted to do things my way.

There's no doubt I was a bit of a misfit in the Hollywood of the forties. The race for glamour left me far behind. I didn't really want to keep up. I wanted my stardom without the usual trimmings. Because of this, I was branded a rebel at the very least. But I don't regret that for a minute. My appetite was my own and I simply wouldn't have it any other way.

I think they were scared of me because I was different. I've always asked, 'Why? Why do I have to do that? Why do I have to look this way? Why do I have to dress this way? Why do I have to behave this way?'

Taking into account the public's regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.

They said my friends were just an unruly mob, and I should get a hair cut and get a new job.

I liked anything that was a little bit weird, a little bit different. I always went for the psychotic, weird, 'dingey' bands.

Stray thought for the day: Putting boundaries on how punk should sound/look is the least punk rock thing one can do. Be yourself=Very punk.

So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily.