Joan Jett Quotes

I tend to keep my private life private. I think it's important to have mystique. It's important to keep people thinking and guessing, and you want everyone to think you're singing to them.

I think the one-on-one gigs connecting with the fans - is the most important thing. That will help build your fan base. They'll talk about you, and word spreads. Those things are just as important as knowing how to play an E chord.

It's very tough to give advice because it's tough out there for everybody but for a girl it's even tougher, because I don't think the glass ceiling has changed at all in the past 30 years. Otherwise the radio would be covered with girl bands, or girls in bands, so I don't think much has changed on that level. But I think that bands can still have a lot of success trying to go another route.

If you really believe in yourself, you cannot listen to other people.

I'm not necessarily intimidated by really jocky guys. I can talk football with them, you know what I mean?

The most important thing is being genuine, and real, and not getting caught up in the "Star-Ness" of it. You don't want to act like a star around other people. You have to watch it, and you want to stay grounded, it's very important, and that's probably what I have learned most because you definitely have opportunities to let your ego run wild and you have to keep your ego in check.

If you're secure in yourself, and even if you're not secure in yourself, you don't need to bully.

When you're onstage and the audience is smiling and singing and bopping along and you're all on the same level, it's the best feeling in the world. It may sound dumb and corny to say it, but it's like pure love.

I think it's important to have mystique.

You know I don't care if the world thinks I'm smart or not.

Beyond just writing about falling in love and out of love and wanting to do certain things and going out and partying and all the things that I grew up writing about, I want to write about deeper things.

Obviously, the music and lyrics are in me, but if I let myself get in my own way, I do. I empty out and let it come, and then the music spirits take over.

I consider that success for anything, whether it's being a musician or a writer. As long as you can support yourself, you're successful. People need to change their idea of what success is.

I think what people see in me is one slice of who I am. It does permeate my life in the sense that I don't like to be told what to do, or how to be, or how I can do it. But I'm probably a lot tamer than people would expect.

Aggressive, tough and defiant may describe me, but that leaves the impression I'm mean and I'm not. People expect me to have fangs.

That was exactly why people didn't want to give us any kind of life, because we were threatening their status quo, and they just didn't want to have room for girls playing rock 'n' roll. It bothered them. First, people just tried to get around it by saying, "Oh, wow, isn't that cute? Girls playing rock 'n' roll!," and when we said, "Yeah, right, this isn't a phase; it's what we want to do with our lives," it became, "Oh! You must be a bunch of sluts. You dykes, you whores." That's what it became. Then it became a name-calling contest.

I really wanted it to be organic and coming from my heart. So, I think maybe the initial thought of wanting to go in that direction, I had to wait until things happened in our world and in our country that fired me up enough where the words came out organically.

If you are gonna live your life, just try to not be crazy, have fun but have some focus and some purpose and try to know what that is. If you don't know now, try to figure it out.

Other people will call me a rebel, but I just feel like I'm living my life and doing what I want to do. Sometimes people call that rebellion, especially when you're a woman.

Shaving my head was a millennium ritual, to not let it pass as just another New Year's Eve. A lot has happened to me in the last couple of years, personally and spiritually. I wanted to mark it for myself.

Fetish is a straight-up sex song.

I learned how to scream from Marc Bolan.

People like to tear you down. People are always going to take shots. You've just got to go for it.

You want to have butterflies in your stomach, because if you don't, if you walk out onstage complacent, that's not a good thing.

The thing that sometimes gets lost is people look at the harder edge of me ... the leather jacket and the tough rock 'n' roll attitude... and get the wrong impression that I'm mean. That's really something I don't want people to think because I don't think that's the case.

Egotistical people are not pretty. We all know that, I'm sure everybody knows an egotistical person someplace.

I'd like to just be a little bit more open to making mistakes and not worrying about it so much.

I love school. I was a great student.

In pop music, you say, 'You can do what you want to me.' Rock 'n' roll says, 'I'm gonna do what I want to you.'

Only because The Runaways were my baby and there's no reason to get it back together except to totally have fun. If that's not the goal, then I don't want to do it.

I like to hang out with my friends. I love music. I like to go to the movies. I like to eat. I like to cook.

I remember times when I was at shows and the person onstage locked eyes with me. And in that moment, everything was right with the world. I think that's part of my job, to create these thousands of moments every night. And for the rest of their life, they can say, 'You guys looked at me,' or 'You sweated on me,' or 'I got your gum.'

I'm really happy doing what I'm doing. I'm not looking to do anything else. I love what I do. I love music. I love playing. I love touring.

I have a tough time judging myself.

When I met you you were oh so sweet, now you give me the bread and you take all the meat.

Life is strong and fragile. It's a paradox... It's both things, like quantum physics: It's a particle and a wave at the same time. It all exists all together.

I feel like it's my job to carry the torch.

I don't know if I miss it per se, but I do miss the fact that there just doesn't seem to be any rock 'n' roll out there anyplace. Everything does seem kind of tame. It's even hard in Manhattan to go out and find a good band to go see.

Disharmony is natural in any band.

I think what I'm going to do is get more balance in my life to still be able to go out and play the hard rock 'n' roll and do what I like to do in music

I've always got something to say.

I left my family, and I left my brother and sister, and I went and lived my dream. I saw everybody, but is it ever enough?

I had a blast doing the Warped Tour, but it's good to be home, for sure.

Before I settled on music, I wanted to be an archaeologist, an astronaut, all sorts of really diverse things.

Women are still second-class citizens.

I don't really care if you think I'm strange--I ain't gonna change!

My parents taught me I could be anything in the world I wanted to be.

I think it's what the times are demanding. If you're talking about the popular artists, they collaborate with a lot of different people and it seems to be in vogue now. It probably is indicative of the times.