Mike Watt Quotes

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

Punk rock will never die, until something more dangerous replaces it.

When I was fifteen, I used to run around reading 'Adbusters' and dumpster diving, trying to find ways to make the U.S. government unwind into chaos through hardcore punk and metal.

Punk is not really a style of music. It was more like a state of mind.

It's true the punk fashion itself was iconographic: rips and dirt, safety pins, zips, slogans, and hairstyles. These motifs were so iconic in themselves - motifs of rebellion.

My whole life is punk.

Punk rock was the tsunami that threatened to drown us all in 1977.

All punk is is attitude. That's what makes it. The attitude.

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.

The martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth.

Punk music is rebellious.

For me the safety pin is about rebellion, and I'm punk in the soul.

When someone asks you, 'What's punk?' my reply is, 'If you have to ask, you're never going to know.'

I will always consider myself a punk because of those experiences in high school. It will always be a part of me.

The ideology of Miller's 'lost boys' is an incandescent mix derived from PlayStation violence, Iraq news footage, Peter Pan, William Burroughs's 'Wild Boys,' and anti-G8 millenarianism.

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.

Some visualize the Pistols era in shades of black and white. It wasn't. Actually, the colors I envision are neon or army dirt green with fluorescent pink--anything that would annoy."

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.

If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I'm getting rid of grunge.

Punk and all that was just an image that ripped people off. Johnny Rotten's a wanker, and that's all there is to it.

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.

There are characters in [punk] that do deliberately go as far as they can in certain kind of taboo areas.

Will punk rock ever die? Pal, if you have to ask it's dead to you.

I identified very much with punk, not only in the fashion sector, but in every other sector. The very nature of doing something new and free meant something that was against authority.

Punk was over in two years. That was the only damn good thing about it.