Ben Eine Quotes

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

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

I remember at school one day there was a vocabulary list on the chalkboard, and the word 'nonconformist' was on there, and it said, 'Someone that doesn't appeal to society, someone who doesn't fit in.' We had this whole conversation about it, and I realized it cohered to the punk-rock world that I was into.

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

I hate the word 'hippy'. I hate a lot of people, and hippies don't do that!

People can have their punk ideals, but I don't really care about that kind of thing.

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

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.

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.

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.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

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've always straddled a weird line - there's a lot of mainstream stuff that I love. At the same, I still feel like an outsider. I'm the outsider who's on the inside.

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.

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.

Everybody was starting to grow long hair and wear pink suits and purple glasses and stuff and then, I suppose, some people thought we were crazy, but we weren't really crazy because we're all still here!

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

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

I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don't like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don't like to be shaped by society.

I was very much not a follower of labels in school. If anything, I was labeled 'uncool.'

I turned to punk because I didn't fit in anywhere else.

Is punk dressing up in leather jackets? No. It's having a counter-cultural perspective.

My attraction to the Church of Satan... is the same thing that initially attracted me to punk rock. It was something that wasn't very entirely popular, and it was sort of like the adversary to mainstream culture and beliefs.