Tom Petty Quotes

I used to skip school and paint my face with Ace Frehley Kiss make-up.

When people talk about the '60s I never think that was me there. It was me and I was in it, but I was never enamoured with all that. It's supposed to be sex and drugs and rock and roll and I'm not really like that. I've never really seen the Rolling Stones as anything.

There's a young man in a T-shirt listening to a rock and roll station. He's got greasy hair, greasy smile, he says, Lord this must be my destination.

Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

I'm dealing in rock'n'roll. I'm, like, I'm not a bona fide human being.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

I was raised on Nirvana and flannel shirts and Rage Against the Machine, and I sort of describe my youth as rebellious and always fighting the system.

That's what drew me to rock music in the first place - that sense of remaking the world on your own terms.

To me, rock music was never meant to be safe. I think there needs to be an element of intrigue, mystery, subversiveness. Your parents should hate it.

Rock 'n' Roll, no roses or gardening.

It's what's missing, I think, from most music - the rebellious part. That rebelliousness is part of great rock music or great literature or any great creative stuff.

If you're trying to get to the underworld of Berlin, it's not suits and ties; it's rock and roll.

Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and The Sex Pistols may come and go, but rebellion remains a key part of the rock n' roll experience. However, that rebellion - the outgrowth of a youthful search for independence and identity - doesn't always take the same form.

I am one of the barbarians - I love rock and roll.

We want people to know they shouldn't feel like social pariahs just because they want to dress differently or listen to rock n' roll.

I thought everybody got into rock 'n' roll because they didn't want to follow instructions.

I mean, the thing about Guns N' Roses was that it wasn't trying to attach itself to the '80s, or anything that had to do with the '80s. It's just who we were at that time. We were doing what we wanted to do. That had really nothing to do with anything around us, except for the simple fact that we were rebelling against that stuff.

Rock'n'roll is not red carpets and MySpace friends, rock'n'roll is dangerous and should piss people off

Everything they’d been brought up not to do, they could do at a rock-and-roll show.

Rap is rock 'n' roll. Rock is when you push the buttons in the system; when you say, I'm not going along with what you're saying. That's rock, whether it's done with guitars, or it's done with just beats.

Classic Van Halen made people want to dance and f**k. Modern Van Halen makes you want to drink milk and drive foreign cars.

Rock'n'roll to me is a rebellion against the sterile pedestal culture of movies.

Rock & roll is not so much a question of electric guitars as it is striped pants.

I love the classic trucker jacket as an icon of rock 'n' roll and rebellion.

We are looking at these rock 'n' roll campers, and we know what is going on in their minds because we've been there.