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“The best way to scare a Tory is to read and get rich.”
― Idles

“I hear a phone ringing through the thick fuzzy air. It's Thunders, asking me to join the Heartbreakers. He says to come over to the rehearsal studios right now. I’m scared but I go anyway. That should be written on my gravestone. She was scared. But she went anyway.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“I guess I was falling in love. I think she was just falling.”
― Veronica Schanoes

“Basically we all need to be anarchists already, there I said it.”
― Ben Passmore, Your Black Friend and Other Strangers

“Yeah, maybe sometimes I do feel like shit. I ain’t happy about it but I’d rather feel like shit than be full of shit.”
― Suicidal Tendencies

“Shitting and bleeding. Always had a problem with shit and blood. The English love to talk about shitting, so other nationalities can skip this bit.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“In hindsight, it's seen as inevitable that the two Germany's would reunite. But none of the people who had laid the groundwork for the fall-those who had started the tremors and endured the security forces' brutality-envisioned a unified Germany. Those people had sacrificed their places in society for the chance to form a new one, something different and distinct, an independent East Germany built form scratch. The hadn't looked to the West for inspiration before, and none of them looked to the West for salvation now that the border was open.”
― Tim Mohr, Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

“The ethos of East Berlin punk infused the city with a radical egalitarianism and a DIY approach to maintaining independence-to conjuring up the world you want to live in regardless of the situation or surroundings.”
― Tim Mohr, Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

“Being a punk is about constantly surprising... Being a punk means systematically changing the image of yourself, being elusive, sabotaging cultural and political codes...Undermine, transform, exceed expectations. That's what punk means to me.”
― Nadya Tolokonnikova, Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism

“Music brought the war in Vietnam right into our bedrooms. Songs we heard from America made us interested in politics; they were history lessons in a palatable, exciting form. We demonstrated against the Vietnam and Korean wars, discussed sexual liberation, censorship and pornography and read books by Timothy Leary, Hubert Selby Jr (Last Exit to Brooklyn) and Marshall McLuhan because we'd heard all these people referred to in songs or interviews with musicians. [...] Music, politics, literature, art all crossed over and fed into each other. There were some great magazines around too [...] Even though we couldn’t afford to travel, we felt connected to other countries because ideas and events from those places reached us through music and magazines.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“Johnny Rotten slouches at the front of the stage, propped up on the mike stand. He's leaning so far forward he looks as if he might topple into the empty space in front of the audience. · His face is pale and his body is twisted into such an awkward ugly shape he looks deformed. He looks ordinary, about the same age as us, the kind of boy I was at comprehensive school with. He's not a flashy star like Marc Bolan or David Bowie, all dressed up in exotic costumes, he's not a virtuoso musician like Eric Clapton or Peter Green, he's not even a macho rock-and-roll pub-band singer â€� he's just a bloke from Finsbury Park, London, England, who’s pissed off. Johnny sneers at us in his ordinary North London accent, his voice isn't trained and tuneful, it's a whiny cynical drawl, every song delivered unemotionally. There's no fake American twang either. All the things I'm so embarrassed about, John's made into virtues. He's unapologetic about who he is and where he comes from. Proud of it even. He's not taking the world's lack of interest as confirmation that he’s wrong or worthless. I look up at him twisting and yowling and realise it's everyone else who's wrong, not him. How did he make that mental leap from musically untrained, state-school-educated, council estate boy, to standing on stage in front of a band? I think he's brave. A revolutionary. He's sending a very powerful message, the most powerful message anyone can ever transmit. Be yourself.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“Things can get out of hand quickly, especially with Sid around. I also decide never to wear heels again when I'm out with him. I go to Holt's in Camden Town and buy a pair of black Dr Martens. (You can get them in black, brown or maroon, the skinhead boys at school used to buy the brown ones and polish them with Kiwi Oxblood shoe polish â€� this gives them a deep reddish brown colour, much subtler than the flat red of the originals. They also keep them pristinely clean and polished at all times.) I wear my new boots with everything â€� dresses, tutus â€� it’s a great feeling to be able to run again. No other girl wears DMs with dresses, so I get a lot of funny looks. (Skinhead girls only wear DMs with Sta-Prest trousers. With their boring grey skirts, they west plain white or holey ecru tights and black patent brogues.) Bit I wear them all the time to clubs and pubs, it eventually catches on with other girls and I don’t look so odd.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“The problem in the DDR wasn't No Future, the rallying cry of British Punk. As Planlos guitarist Kobs liked to say, the problem in East Germany was Too Much Future.”
― Tim Mohr, Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

“She just wanted to be herself, and doing, saying, reading and writing the things that would have made her feel like herself were all verboten.”
― Tim Mohr, Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

“Kids in tje East had also grown up with a genuine sense of fear that the world might actually come to an end during their lifetime. That it probably would in fact. For some this fueled nihilistic feelings - one reason Toster from Die Anderen, for instance, never got deeply political was because he stopped giving a shit.”
― Tim Mohr, Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

“And as the Stasi began to pay more and more attention to the new network, they made the same mistake they had when trying to break up the punk scene a few years before: they sought to identify leaders and focus on undermining them. The Stasi assumed every organisation had a top-down structure like the Stasi, like the Party, like the dictatorship.”
― Tim Mohr, Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

“Punkâ€� was the only time I fitted in. Just one tiny sliver of time where it was acceptable to say what you thought.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“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.”
― Ian F. Svenonius, Censorship Now!!

“We’re the ones that have always been excluded, afraid to be ourselves. And now what? We get our own scene and start pushing people to the sidelines? Does that make sense? Fuck that. Fuck being as small as they are. Be big. Be bigger than them.”
― Eyad Zahra

“I grew up with John Lennon at my side, like a big brother.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“Musicians are our real teachers. They are opening us up politically with their lyrics and creatively with experimental, psychedelic music. They share their discoveries and journeys with us. We can’t travel far, no one I know has ever been on an aeroplane. ... whatever they experience, we experience through their songs. It’s true folk music â€� not played on acoustic guitar by a bearded bloke â€� but about true-life experiences.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“Everyone knows how to get a squat: you go along to an empty house at night, break in, change the locks and it’s yours. [...] Later we’ll have someone to jam the electricity meter with a pin so we have free electricity. Everyone does that.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“I rush home and put the record on ['Horsesâ€� by Patti Smith]. It hurts through stream of consciousness, careers into poetry and dissolves into sex. [...] She’s a private person who dares to let go in front of everyone, puts herself out there and risks falling flat on her face. Up until now girls have been controlled and restrained. Patti Smith is abandoned. [...] Listening to Horses unlocks an idea for me - girlsâ€� sexuality can be on their own terms, for their own pleasure or creative work, not just for exploitation or to get a man. [...] Hearing Patti Smith be sexual, building to an organic crescendo, whilst leading a band, is so exciting. It’s emancipating. If I can take a quarter or even eighth of what she has and not give a shit about making a fool of myself, maybe I can still do something with my life.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“Sid's quite awkward and talks in spurts like he thinks it's stupid to have a point of view, but he's got to communicate, so he forces the words out. I can see it's not that he's unsure of his opinions, he just thinks it's pathetic to have a strong opinion on any subject; to be intelligent means being able to see all sides.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“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.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“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 pinsâ€� 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.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“I say something provocative to Posh Boy, he threatens me with violence, and the next thing I know, Sid's whipped off his studded belt, wrapped around his fist and smashed Posh Boy over the head with the buckle end. Splits his head open. (Sid taught me this move: wrap the tongue of the belt round your hand, use the buckle as the weapon, it's important to lock your arm straight whilst you wield the belt, and do the worst thing you can think of first. That’s the only chance you’ve got.)”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“I've got so used to my life being challenging and fraught with danger that I don't question it any more. Whether I’m knocking on the door of a hardcore sex shop, walking through suburban streets being verbally abused and spat on, or being threatened on the tube, I don't give in. I don’t dress normally to have an easy life. The pilgrimage down the King’s Road to get to the Shop (Sex: everyone calls it ‘the Shopâ€�), the place I want to hang out and buy stuff, is one of the scariest things I do â€� running the gauntlet of teds who want to kill people like me â€� but nothing will stop me looking the way I want. It’s a commitment.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“Vivienne [Westwood] and Malcolm [McLaren] use clothes to shock, irritate and provoke a reaction but also to inspire change. Mohair jumpers, knitted on big needles, so loosely that you can see all the way through them, T-shirts slashed and written on by hand, seams and labels on the outside, showing the construction of the piece; these attitudes are reflected in the music we make. It’s ok not to be perfect, to show the workings of your life and your mind in your songs and your clothes. And everything you do in life is meaningful on a political level. That’s why we’re all merciless about each other’s failings and why sloppiness is derided.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

“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.”
― Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys