Fred Armisen Quotes

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.

I remember being really young - being 13 or 14 - when I first was really excited about punk rock as an idea, and I was like, 'Don't ever not be punk. Don't ever not be punk.' Telling that to myself, I guess it was like self-defense against the scary world around me.

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

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

My whole life is punk.

I will always, no matter what, be a punk more than anything.

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 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.

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

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

Punk is not just the sound, the music. Punk is a lifestyle.

The principles of punk-rock culture, of self-expression and DIY culture, that really spoke to me.

I can't live in a world of dullards. So I think on that level, I'm definitely punk.

Don't get caught up in fashion games. These kids probably think we're old, nark conformists or something, but really, they're just conforming in their own ways. They're conforming to nonconformity.

In the Seventies and Eighties we all had our fun, and now and then we went really too far. But, ultimately, it required a certain amount of clear thinking, a lot of hard work and good make-up to be accepted as a freak.

I wasn't, you know, Mr. Popular. I was somewhere in the middle ground. I was quite alternative, the things I liked to do. Skateboarding, at the time. Playing in a band as opposed to playing in the rugby team. You know, that kind of thing.

I dug the idea that I was being perceived as the black sheep of my family, but for me, it was like, I was a rebel, and that to me was most important.

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.

Punk has always been about doing things your own way. What it represents for me is ultimate freedom and a sense of individuality.

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.

It wasn't so much of a controlled effort to end up as part of the Goth scene.

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

I do think I have a rebellious, metal-loving rock chick inside of me.

I grew up in the Bible Belt and I made my own clothes and dyed my hair purple. Nobody ever knew what to do with me.