Viv Albertine Quotes

Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?

The most wonderful time to be in the art world was in the sixties, because it wasn't a business - there was no business of doing art.

Every band I've worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they've gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

What makes bebop legitimate is the fact that when it was done, it was illegitimate.

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

I don't care about the rules. In fact, if I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song then I'm not doing my job properly.

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

The more far-out artists, the better.

I grew up in the 90s in the time of grunge when if you didn't go on stage in jeans and a T shirt you weren't 'real.' That seemed ridiculous to me.

Punk was more based on social change than on music, so it didn't bother me too much. It wasn't really a musical threat.

So many big magazines just dissed the whole punk thing as nothing, but really, it was a big thing. It really changed, and that's what we wanted to do - change the system.

I feel like I want to make anime that destroys the norms, something that would be strong, even if it is unconventional.

'Hedwig' was pretty much all the things I wanted to do that other people said I probably shouldn't do: drag, punk rock, stand-up comedy... You know, combine them all in a thing that's supremely uncommercial from the objective point of view.

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

I wanted to go so I could learn the rules and conventions in order to break them later on.

Punk is the way of those who are unable to express themselves, but they aren't dangerous; at worst, they may kill their audience.

All art is based on non-conformity.

Of course, there's a certain type of person who feels that anything which becomes mainstream has to be rejected immediately. And that's part of the indie-alternative snobbery and hierarchy and elitism.

A true artist is always out of his time.

I'm not anti-fashion, but I've always had a bit of a punk attitude. That's important, I think. I do my own thing.

The iconoclastic mode, that specific mode of language, there is an element of it that it is punk - that is confrontational. That's just a part of the language of jazz - at a certain point.

When you're young, with less on the line, it's easier to be audacious, to experiment. So I introduced the concerns of my generation - politics, sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, etc. - to the comics page, which for many years caused a rolling furor.

I think the avant-garde often hides itself in the highly incomprehensible because they are frustrated that the real world is so boring.

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

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.