Feminists From The United States

"I love being around people that are smarter than me, that think faster than me. So even if you're a dork, and you wear stupid clothes, and you make a fool of yourself, and everyone makes fun of you, and you're just an idiot—I don't care about the context. I don't care. If you're genius and I recognize it, I kind of dig that."

"I'll always prefer to play with women and hang out with women, and I'll always be a feminist. But let me tell you something. Gloria Steinem never helped me out; Larry Flynt did."

"We choose convenience over individuality every time—every time."

"I finally learned from Fred Durst, who is [of] my generation, that "selling out" means every ticket at The Forum got sold. I don't think Britney [Spears] and Christina [Aguilera] sit there agonizing over their record sales. The [term] "sell out" needs to be eradicated from the language, because if you don't "sell out," guess what? An asshole will."

"I do remember not having good social skills [as a child], although I learned them later. I learned them from hanging out at a gay disco, learning them from drag queens; and I learned them in Liverpool, and I learned them in juvenile hall. So, I learned [my social skills] from future criminals, drag queens, and rock stars."

"I'm all for putting money back into the black community, who white people have been stealing from for years."

"Since I’ve basically been giving my music away for free under the old system, I’m not afraid of wireless, MP3 files or any of the other threats to my copyrights. Anything that makes my music more available to more people is great. MP3 files sound cruddy, but a well-made album sounds great. And I don’t care what anyone says about digital recordings. At this point they are good for dance music, but try listening to a warm guitar tone on them. They suck for what I do. … I’m looking for people to help connect me to more fans, because I believe fans will leave a tip based on the enjoyment and service I provide. I’m not scared of them getting a preview. It really is going to be a global village where a billion people have access to one artist and a billion people can leave a tip if they want to. It’s a radical democratization. Every artist has access to every fan and every fan has access to every artist, and the people who direct fans to those artists. People that give advice and technical value are the people we need. People crowding the distribution pipe and trying to ignore fans and artists have no value. This is a perfect system."

"My brother, Toby, is six-foot-six, [and] he [went to] Vassar; my other brother, Brown; my sister, without one penny from me or my [step]dad, NYU Law, number one in her class—Jesus, it's such a functional family, I don't know where I came from."

"Do you remember when you were young, and you’d stare at someone on-stage and think ‘Oh my God—he looked right at me?’ I do, so I have this kind of rescue-fantasy thing. When I see kids in the audience I think, ‘Okay, that’s me, and it would be kind of cool if the person on-stage would come down and save me.’ I’m not going to be able to save every one of them, but I’ll do my best, because I genuinely like kids. If I didn’t have my lust for my art, I probably would have ended up working with them."

"I didn't know it was such a guy's job. It's like playing football in high heels and lipstick; no wonder it smears."

"Releasing those songs into the void, and not having the void answer back, led all of us to splinter off and attempt to make our mark by deconstructing. Instead of going forward with my tunesmithing, I went back to the beginning. And that’s what Pretty on the Inside was about. I said, ‘I’m not going to follow any of the songwriting values that I’ve been learning for a good seven years. Instead, I’m going to set up on my own land and make my own stake, and see where it goes.’ And the next place that takes me is Seattle, where what was happening was so heavy, and so intense."

"Even though I now feel more confident and happy, I was really paranoid for about a year and a half. Basically, what happened was that I quit taking drugs and I walked out into the world and was sort of in this film that was really well received. So, after years of living a more destructive lifestyle, I had to, instantly, kind of court this world which had incredibly nice value systems, but with protocols that I had never encountered before. And then I had to reconcile these two worlds. You know—I want to live a happier, more productive lifestyle, but the question was, did I want to renounce being in a great rock ’n’ roll band for that? The answer was ‘No way.’"

"[Crack] used to be called freebase when white rich people did it. Then it got sold in batches, and white rich people were still doing it, and it was still called freebase. And then all of a sudden this guy named Ricky Freeway Ross started making it and he happened to be black, and— everything is political— and, then it turned into "crack.""

"Without the benefit of history, there was no way you could be in the middle of all that and understand what it was like. To be a couple that persecuted, and to be such weak people, so frail and reactive, huddling together because the whole world is going [she makes a sound like a bomb going off]. You’ve got your own team, the sectarian left, splintering off and pointing accusing fingers. We’re fucking picking nits off Eddie Vedder and Eddie Vedder is trying to take on the constitution, and the whole fucking world is damning me to the stake. It was insanity. So in reaction to that, I made a record about it."

"I punched out Kathleen Hanna... Sonic Youth brought her. I punched her, and she screamed, "I'll take you on, any college in America, any feminist debate," and I said, "But Kathleen, that means you're going to have to read!""

"I wore a dress that was so restricting and shoes that were five inches high, I could barely stage-dive. Then I got the best write-ups, for being feminine, I guess. I couldn’t move well and I was restrained, which equals great review. That’s pretty horrid."

"Imagine this: You're peaking. You're in you youth. At the prime of your life. The last thing you want to be is a symbol of heroin use. You've finally met somebody of the opposite gender who you can write with. That's never happened before in your life. The only other person you could ever write with wasn't as good a writer as you, and this person's a better writer than you. And you're in love, you have a best friend, you have a soul-fucking-mate, and you can't even believe it's happening in your lifetime. And as a bonus he's beautiful. And he's rich. And he's a hot rock star to boot. And he's the best fuck that ever walked. And he wants to have babies, and what you want is babies. You've wanted to have babies forever. And he understands everything you say. And he completes your sentences. And he's lazy, but is spiritual, and he's not embarrassed about praying, he's not embarrassed about God, Jesus, none of it. He fucking thinks it's all really cool. He wants to fucking learn the path. He wants to be enlightened. Everything. And there's even some room for you to fix him, which you like, 'cause you're a fixer-upper. He's perfect in almost every fucking way. The only fucking happiness that I ever had. And then it all gets taken away."

"I didn't ever really talk until I started hanging out in '80 or '81 with the drag queens at the Metropolis [or Met, a gay new wave club] in Portland. I was very, very quiet. So much so that at one point when I was very young I was diagnosed as a probable autistic. And then I started hanging around with bitchy drag queens and with [my friends] Ursula and Robin, and they basically raised me. I found my inner bitch and I ran with her."

"With me and Kurt, it was either Bonnie and Clyde, Sid and Nancy, or mommy. That's where it got at the end, but the rest of the time it was equal. The equality was based on Bonnie and Clyde, which is fucking goddamn fun. And Romeo and Juliet. But it was also Hamlet and Hamlet. Not Hamlet and Ophelia. These two fucking Hamlets sitting around."

"I used to see media on Althea [Flynt] and she was very wild looking. She had a mohawk and she published Hustler—I thought that was crazy. But when you study her, she was so innocent and frail and sort of birdlike, and sweet. She stayed sweet until she died, but I don't know what happened for her to get into drugs or the things she got into."

"My goal keeps me alive, and no personal issue is going to interfere with that. If people try to put me in the crazy box–'crazy fucking Courtney'–go ahead. But if you think you’re going to stop me from where I’m going, you’re not going to do it. I work my ass off. I deliver the goddamn goods. And I will deliver them again."

"Does that make you happy, Mr. Rock & Roll Fantasy? You know what? Eddie Vedder’s gonna live to be 98. How’s that make you feel, huh? I love you, come back. You come back! You love us. You love me, don’t you? You love Frances. Where are you? Are you happier now?"

"[Internet forums are] kind of fun and stuff, but what's really weird is how they fucking give such a shit about how I'm spelling. It's like, what, I worked to be a clerical worker? I didn't take typing class, assholes."

"Don’t eat cheese. There are a million things to eat that are not cheese."

"The deal with fashion is that proletariat male rock critics have a real Bruce Springsteen problem with denim boomer issues. We as females have thousands and thousands of years of fashion in our DNA. We want to wear nice fucking clothes—it's part of what we do, so I don't have an issue with it. If you have an opportunity to go to the Oscars in a fabulous gown, you're gonna fucking take it. I don't have to listen to a rule. Who made that rule? Some dumb guy."

"When I post, I forget I’m famous. It’s a really bad thing."

"The American male runs half of the global world and grows up on rock music from day one. If you can alter the psyche of someone who's growing up to be a rapist or a total misogynist, you're creating values and instead of making the void bigger, you're making it smaller."

"You know what? I was doing Loveline on KROQ, and Lydia [Lunch] sent this fax in that said like, “You’ll never be smarter than me. Stop trying to copy me." So I read it out over the air and I said, "Lydia, I’ve been copying you since I fucking heard of you. You’re the best thing on the planet. I give you more tribute than anybody else and I love you and I wish you wouldn’t be so mad at me. And, Lydia, if there’s anything I can do for you – if there’s any philosophical, tax deductible thing that I can contribute to – you know how to get in touch with me.""

"My thing is 'Don't fuck with me.' In real life, real real life, I'm supersensitive, but people tend to think I'm not vulnerable because I don't act vulnerable."

"Writing songs has a lot to do with your sexuality. I danced for awhile and just being around that made me realize what people use. And if you grow up blessed with a certain beauty or a certain intelligence that enhances your beauty, you can get into a better position in life."

"I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming."

"I've always been provocative toward guys like that. They're lame, and they make it not fun for nerdy guys and nerdy girls and uncool people. They're like these self-righteous jock pricks up at the front, and they come there just to razz you— to tell you that they have a boner, or that they want to see your tits, or that you're ugly, or that you're a whore or something. They're ridiculous."

"If I fuckin' die without having written two, three, or four brilliant rock songs... I don't know why I lived my life."

"I try to place [beautiful imagery] next to fucked up imagery, because that's how I view things … I sometimes feel that no one's taken the time to write about certain things in rock, that there's a certain female point of view that's never been given space."

"I never expected I would be connected to the Alpha male as some kind of ancillary object, and to this day it mystifies me."

"One step, two steps, counting tiles on the floor; Three steps, four steps, guess this means that I'm a whore. Uh-oh, hell no, how long till I reach the door? Fuck me, my feet are sore.I'm wearing last night's dress and I look like a hot ass mess. Although my hair looks good cause I haven't slept yet!"

"True love, true love. It must be true love. Nothing else can break my heart like True love, true love. It must be true love. No one else can break my heart like you."

"Where there is desire, There is gonna be a flame. Where there is a flame, Someone’s bound to get burned. But just because it burns Doesn’t mean you’re gonna die. You’ve gotta get up and try, try, try."

"Just give me a reason, Just a little bit's enough. Just a second we're not broken just bent And we can learn to love again. It's in the stars; It's been written in the scars on our hearts. We're not broken just bent, And we can learn to love again."

"I think I've finally had enough; I think I maybe think too much. I think this might be it for us (blow me one last kiss). You think I'm just too serious; I think you're full of shit. My head is spinning so (blow me one last kiss). Just when I think it can't get worse, I've had a shit day (no!) You've had a shit day (no!) We've had a shit day (no!). I think that life's too short for this; I'll pack my ignorance and bliss. I think I've had enough of this. Blow me (one last kiss)."

"Have you ever fed a lover With just your hands? Close your eyes and trust it, just trust it. Have you ever thrown A fist full of glitter in the air? Have you ever looked fear in the face, And said I just don't care?"

"So raise your glass if you are wrong in all the right ways, All my underdogs. We will never be, never be anything but loud And "Nitty-Gritty", Dirty little freaks. Won't you come and come and Raise your glass! Just come on and come on and Raise your glass."

"This used to be a funhouse, But now it's full of evil clowns. It's time to start the countdown. I'm gonna burn it down down down; I'm gonna burn it down."

"How did I become so obnoxious? What is it with you that makes me act like this? I've never been this nasty. Can't you tell that this is just a contest?,br>The one that wins will be the one that hits the hardest. But baby I don't mean it. I mean it, I promise."

"Alright sir, Sure I'll have another one, it's early. Three olives, shake it up, I like it dirty (dirty). Tequila for my friend it makes her flirty (flirty). Trust me. I'm the instigator of underwear, Showing up here and there uh oh (oh no). I'm always on a mission from the get go. So what if it's only 1 o'clock in the afternoon? It's never too soon to send out all the invitations to the last night (of your life)."

"Pretty pretty please, Don't you ever ever feel Like you're less than Fuckin' perfect? Pretty pretty please, If you ever ever feel Like you're nothing, You're fuckin' perfect to me."

"No I don't believe you When you say don't come around here no more. I want to remind you, You said we wouldn't be apart. No, I don't believe you When you say you don't need me anymore. So don't pretend To not love me at all."

"I'm not here for your entertainment. You don't really want to mess with me tonight. Just stop and take a second. I was fine before you walked into my life. 'Cause you know it's over Before it began. Keep your drink, just give me the money. It's just you and your hand tonight."

"So, so what? I'm still a rock star, I got my rock moves, And I don't need you. And guess what, I'm having more fun. And now that were done, I'm gonna show you tonight I'm alright, I'm just fine. And you're a tool. So, so what? I am a rock star, I got my rock moves. And I don't want you tonight."

"I can't stay on your life support, there's a shortage in the switch. I can't stay on your morphine, cuz its making me itch. I said I tried to call the nurse again but she's bein' a little bitch. I think I'll get outta here, where I canRun, just as fast as I can, To the middle of nowhere, To the middle of my frustrated fears. And I swear, you're just like a pill. Instead of makin' me better, you keep makin' me ill. You keep makin' me ill."