Ariel Pink Quotes

I was born in 1949, and by the time I was 10, I figured out that my hope chest was not aimed in the same direction everybody else's was. And that life was going to be very, very complicated. And that I could either be provocative and declamatory, or shy, retiring and scared.

I never really felt like I quite fit in. Other boys were playing sports and into hunting and stereotypically masculine activities. I was always more attracted to the arts. I loved to dance, I loved to sing, and I always knew I would be an actor. I don't really know why.

I wasn't interested in going to the school dances. I wasn't interested in going to the football games. What I wanted was to be in my room painting my walls and doing weird stuff. That's what I wanted and I got to do what I wanted, so that, to me, is my high school experience.

At Murry Bergtraum High I wanted to be as different from my father as possible. So I acted out in school, I was very anti-authority.

I think, a lot of times, people don't want to do what their parents do because they want to be their own person.

The years between leaving school and actually becoming an adult are very important years. You make a lot of choices as to the type of life you want to lead and what type of person you want to be. There were so many people who had opinions of me, a lot of them very unflattering, that it was hard to make up my mind about who I was supposed to be.

Father, I am from a different egg than your other children. Think of me as a duckling raised by hens. I am not a domestic bird destined to spend his life in a chicken coop. the water that scares you rejuvenates me. For unlike you I can swim, and swim I shall. The ocean is my homeland. If you are with me, come to the ocean. If not, stop interfering with me and go back to the chicken coop.

Slackers might look like the left-behinds of society, but they are actually one step ahead, rejecting most of society and the social hierarchy before it rejects them. The dictionary defines slackers as people who evade duties and responsibilities. A more modern notion would be people who are ultimately being responsible to themselves and not wasting their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for.

I think sometimes bad behaviour can be liberating for certain people. They need to behave badly to find themselves - to go off path to find their path. You see it with kids all the time: They're testing boundaries, and I think that's healthy.

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

I had moments of my actions and words not reflecting who it is I am - if that defines a punk, then yes, absolutely.

How do you rebel in a family of rebels? That's the age-old question. I guess I could have by not going into the arts, but the thing is, I couldn't do anything else.

Carving out an identity for yourself is important so I'm trying to do that as well.

You're made aware of what the industry is and what you need to conform to; I don't fit that, and I'm never going to.

I grew up in the South with my father; blues and country, that's always been my core. But I had it in me not to do what was expected. I wanted to find my own footing.

No, I'm not politically correct. I never wanted to be, and I never will be.

I always tried so hard to fit in, and then I figured out that I didn't want to fit.

I'm a huge freak, and always have been. I spent the first part of my life trying really desperately not to be one, and it was just a waste of time.

I'm a girl from a good family who was very well brought up. One day I turned my back on it all and became a bohemian.

Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that - that sense of reinvention. Kids learned that however crazy you may think it is, there is a place for what you want to do and who you want to be.

When I was 15, I wore combat boots with a fluorescent Columbia ski jacket. I was trying to find myself.

I think there's a lot of pressure on young people to really be the thing that everyone is telling them that they are, opposed to discovering it for themselves.

For me, the teen years were all about searching for a place for myself, wondering why I seemed so different than everyone else, wondering especially why no one could look past the surface and figure out who I really was underneath.

Some people go through a rebellious phase, and they separate and understand that they're not who their family thinks they are.

If I probably didn't have tattoos, or if I probably didn't bleach my hair, or if I probably didn't wear blue jeans and a T-shirt to fancy things, if I didn't do things that make me look like someone who's whacked out of their mind, it'd probably be different. But then again, that's how I wanna dress.