112 Quotes About Punk

The fashion look of teens and twentysomethings -once so cutting edge- is now, like most of the music played on the radio, a matter of routine. Safe, tired, everywhere.

It was the freedom to experiment that made this experiment called Freedom possible.

One day Sid turns up in the peg trousers and they're in ribbons. He'd sliced them up with a razor blade because he hated them so much but he couldn't find his jeans so when he wanted to go out he had to stick them back together. He joined the rips with loads of safety pins, all the way down his legs, hundreds of them. That’s how the ‘loads of safety pins’ thing started amongst people in clubs: they copied it, but he only did it because he couldn’t be bothered to sew his trousers up.

I never strike out at any life form. The only things I attack are icons of conspicuous consumption. People put objects in front of their life, in front of anything that has real importance. They make this 'thing' their God.

Hardcore without punk isn't music, it's a genre of porn. And punk isn't a genre of music, it’s a thought process.

The deaf people there with balloons, holding them up and feeling the vibrations of the balloons to the Germs, all these fuckin' great bands, and using these balloons and dancing around. For a tough old punk, it just made your heart -- it gave you that beautiful feeling. They loved the music, and we were making money for them.

The good thing about shocking is that it clears the brain of preconceptions for a moment, and in that moment the work has a chance to cut through all the habits and learnt behavior of the viewer and make a fresh impact, before all the conditioning crowds in again.

We're invincible together. We have no doubt that the Slits are great and are going to change the world. We're on a mission and pity anyone who doesn’t get it.

Records blurt out trapped moments of rapture, fear, love, anguish, despair, excitement, and insanity. When an album plays, it is a ghost wailing, imprisoned in the moment, rattling its chains.