John Darnielle Quotes

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

Good fashion is like rock music: all anarchy and revolt.

Stray thought for the day: Putting boundaries on how punk should sound/look is the least punk rock thing one can do. Be yourself=Very punk.

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.

Now I'm old... maybe I'm still an eccentric hippie. There's a wonderful freedom in the eccentricity - you can go places, you can be wacky, and you don't have to be constrained. I think that's why people are eccentric - eccentricity is a weapon... and it's great!

Labels don't mean anything to me. I'm trying to play as passionately as I'm able to. If they want to call that cool, that's fine. Just spell the name right, is the formula.

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

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

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

Punk is musical freedom. It's saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster's terms, 'nirvana' means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that's pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

The punk era, at its best, celebrated questioning the norm and the promotion of originality. Both concepts have always resonated with me.

The freedom of punk really appealed to me because I came from the rules and regulations of studying classical piano.

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

I'd rather have people dislike my style than change it. If someone says, 'Hey, Yngwie, you play too damn much,' I don't care. They way I play is the way I like to play. If people like it, great. If they don't, it's still fine with me.

I think, fundamentally, the core of everything I do is punk rock.

Being a rocker, to me, is equal to living as much of the truth as possible.

Punk is all about doing what you want and being yourself. And that's what rap is too.

I've always been proud to be different, I've always stood out like a sore thumb and I always have not given a damn.

Punk rock, to me, was always outsiderness. When I first saw large-group-scene punk rock, I was repelled by it, because there were way too many people who agreed with each other.

I was the bohemian in my family, the "this is my favorite shoe and I don't care if it has tape around it" kind of person. The tape could become a fashion statement. Or a political statement.

PUNK IS: the personal expression of uniqueness that comes from the experiences of growing up in touch with our human ability to reason and ask questions.

It was as if he grew his hair long and smoked cigarettes because he liked to, not because he liked being seen to. This was dangerously subversive.

I don't really care if you think I'm strange--I ain't gonna change!

I learned the word non-conformist in fourth grade and immediately announced that I would grow up to become one.

Now where I come from We don't let society Tell us how it's supposed to be Our clothes, our hair We don't care It's all about being there Everybody's going Uptown That's where I wanna be Uptown Set your mind free.