Neil Young Quotes

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.

At seventeen most people get their ears pierced or get a tattoo or something slightly taboo. That is what I love about Rodrigo Garcia, he's not conventional. He's someone who sees people in extraordinary ways, and forgives them for being such.

When punk really started to happen, it was a reaction against the disco craze of the time.

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

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

I was a little self-centered gutter punk in the early 1980s and all I wanted to do was diss everybody.

Punk allowed women to stop looking feminine. Oh, the relief.

By the time I was 19, punk had occurred. It had a completely different cultural dynamic to it which rejected everything and started again from the year zero.

I had begun to abandon bourgeois style of dress. The modern hippies are no pioneers at marking themselves out by unusual apparel …

You can't be a punk all your life.

I am not steeped in all that angst. I'm never going to be Sid Vicious.

My sister, who is a wonderful and beautiful actress now, when she was 11 or 12, she would go out and take pictures of the punk parties in the desert. She used to have blue hair, and she got kicked out of Las Vegas Day School for having blue hair.

I was a young rebel and really just wanted to be tatted with a shaved head. When I did it, I cried for a week.

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

I went through a real punk stage-I had braids, red hair, pink hair, green hair, I cut it into a Mohawk, the lot. Then about five years ago, I dyed it dark and stayed out of the sun to get pale, because I hated looking like everyone else, all blonde hair and tanned skin.

Certainly for me, when punk exploded in the 1970s, it was just great. We had these wonderful clothes to wear. We could do great things with our hair. We had protest badges that read "I belong to the Blank Generation." It was such a great time to be a kid.

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.

I was about 16 when punk started to happen... It felt like you had this naive idea that you could change things just by wearing something.

I grew up counterculture. I'm essentially a hippie, and I'm essentially a folkie.

The first tattoo I got was when I was 17, and it's a cross on my bicep with 'Only God Can Judge Me' underneath.

My hair used to be real long, and my parents were encouraged when I cut it. They thought I was going 'straight,' but I was just getting weirder - at least in their eyes. I was getting into the punk thing.

When people are very original, sometimes they are original as a way to resist the mainstream.

Let's get with it, guys: You don't need to hear a Ministry song to get political. You should be political on your own. We're just a side project to society. So do I care what people think about me personally? No. I just do what I do.

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

I had a grungy period and looked like a tramp for a very long time - my mum really hated it! I destroyed her entire '70s wardrobe by putting studs into everything - I thought I was really cool. But it's good to experiment - I even had dreadlocks at one point.