Laura Jane Grace Quotes

I will always consider myself a punk because of those experiences in high school. It will always be a part of me.

It's like our little thing: you can take the girl out of the punk, but you can't take the punk out of the girl.

To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom.

My whole life is punk.

'Punk' doesn't mean Mohawks and safety pins. It's about not conforming.

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.

When you're thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side.

I'm embarrassed to reveal that I never went to CBGB's in the '80s. I was never cool enough to be a punk, and I wouldn't have had the stamina, or the discipline, for straight-edge.

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

I'm a punk rocker. I don't do Christian.

Punk rock is very rebellious, of course, but it also means thinking for yourself.

Punk is not really a style of music. It was more like a state of mind.

I first got into music when I heard punk, and it was saying maybe it's OK if you don't live up to the expectations various authorities have for you.

To be involved in the subculture of punk rock puts you in a minority.

To me, punk is about being an individual and going against the grain and standing up and saying 'This is who I am'.

Punk will never be dead to me. It's my life. I can never just drop this lifestyle. It embodies me.

I do fear for the generations of people who came of age thinking that pop-punk is what punk is, and that all the rebellion you need is just to stick your tongue out in the mirror every once in a while.

I was a snot-nosed teenage skater at one point, who listened to only punk records and hung around people that had that idea of what is okay to do and what isn't okay to do.

I never thought of punk rock as the absolute act of rebellion for the sake of rebellion. There's a lot of that in there, but for me I think punk rock was always about questioning things and making decisions for yourself, which is a great message to pass on to your kids.

When I was a child, I was one of the kids who wore black all the time, and when the kids asked me why I wore black, I said things like, 'I'm mourning the death of modern society.' I mean, I was a riot.

I've learned some of the greatest life lessons from growing up in the skate and punk rock communities.

It's very cliched to go, 'You're not punk.' We don't care if we are, and we don't care if we aren't.

Music was a way of rebelling against the whole rah-rah high school thing.

I always said punk was an attitude. It was never about having a Mohican haircut or wearing a ripped T-shirt. It was all about destruction, and the creative potential within that.

Punk was never about one particular clean-cut imagery... it's about many, many individuals coming very loosely together.