Charlie Haden Quotes

When the punk rock thing happened, I thought, 'Right, I have one chance here to be seen as part of some wider social phenomenon.'

I don't do sketch anymore and sometimes I miss it. But I think what I really miss is that time in my life, it was kind of like college. No kids, no real responsibilities, just comedy, food and late nights.

So I feel now very much like a guardian. I'm standing in front of art. I'm standing in front of cinema. I'm standing in front of Black culture. I'm standing in front of the history of America, and I'm protecting it by making art, by protecting our art, and by promoting our art.

I didn't really want to be in the lifestyle without the music. And I didn't want to be in the music without the lifestyle.

I was too old to be a punk rocker. I was a mod, that's really the only youth tribe I ever belonged to - and even then, not for very long.

When I grew up and went to school, all the cool kids were in Carhartts and Mudd boots, and they were listening to the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers and driving Volkswagens.

I paint American people, and I tell American stories through the paintings I create.

My parents grew up during the Harlem renaissance.

Punk was such an exciting time because there were no rules. You could go and knock on Sun Ra's door - and he was in the phonebook, under Ra!

Hollywood must have been terrific once.

When I was a teenager, you were either a punk, a skinhead or a mod, or you weren't on the scene. Me and my mates were skinheads.

Any city that's worth a dang certainly has a musical heartbeat, a culture, and a scene that can stand on its own.

Stuart was a very special person and he was miles ahead of everybody. You know as far as intelligent and artistic feelings are concerned, he was miles ahead. So I learned a lot from him and because in the '60s we had a very strange attitude towards being young, towards sex, towards everything.

Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong year - I think it would have been cool to be alive in the '60s.

I never thought I was playing black music. I was just playing music, the stuff I liked. I sang blues at parties and things when I was a kid.

I got starstruck not by someone who is famous, but by someone who's famous in the miniature painting community. When I was a kid, I used to paint miniatures. There were famous people in the miniature community from forums online. I went to some big event and I saw them in real life and I was so starstruck.

1980's: not a time period but a state of mind.

I was a kid who liked art and theater and dance and music, but if you lived in Harlem, high culture was somewhere else, and it wasn't black.

I hadn’t read a real series like that since I was a kid, and it was exciting to live again in an infinite fiction.

For a long time I heard rap without paying attention, but it is still a way of life, even when you're a kid.

The most relevant misadventure that I had, as a kid, is when I remember being pretty convinced that leprechauns were real and that I was going to catch one.

When I was a kid I really didn't have my own opinions and then sort of transformed into this angel which is really Marilyn Manson and then the final stage is Antichrist Superstar which is the more nihilistic, totalitarian element in everybody's personality, that, is a real struggle on the album and in my life, between that power.

I don't think anyone ever remembers what they were really like as kids. Adults think they do, but they don't. Photos and videos don't capture the real you, or bring back to life the person you used to be. You have to return to the past to do that.

I love watching old movies anyway - I grew up with my mom watching old movies and being immersed in the history of old Hollywood.

I'm a bit of a lefty. I like the idea of art and music collectives.