Top 212 Quotes & Sayings by Kathleen Hanna - Page 3

My mom and I had secret from my dad that we didn't think we were stupid, that we didn't think we needed feminism to be explained to us.

My mom wasn't, like, she was reading all these historical romance novels the majority of the time. She read a feminist book and then my dad would sit down and explain it to her like she was an idiot.

I do have personal relationships with a lot of "fans," in quotations. I answer all my mail, I get emails from fans, and I try to answer them all. That's important to me, but occasionally there's the thing where people basically ask me to write book reports for them, and I don't have that kind of time. I feel like there's a certain sexism involved, like because I'm a woman I'm supposed to constantly be like giving to everybody.

There are people who view their feminism in different ways. I used to beat myself up if I didn't react to things like I was supposed to.

If you really hate me, you should at least have the courtesy to take out a piece of paper and write it down and mail it to me. If you're a worthy nemesis, I want to see your handwriting. I want to see your name and your address, and if you don't have the guts to give me those, then you're not a worthy nemesis.

My original goal in the '90s, after I found feminism and I was the first generation in my family to go to college, was to spread this information that feminism was still very much alive, and that you can't believe the media telling you that it doesn't need to exist and that it doesn't exist.

I think that the Internet is really cool because a lot of young feminists don't feel like they have to reinvent the wheel.

What usually happens with me is that I start with one idea in mind and then something else happens.

I'm so language-based and I'm so about communicating, and my art has always been very audience-based, and very about being functional and communicating something, and about feeling like I have to be heard.

As I've gotten older, I've realized that things are a lot more permeable. It's not so black and white: not every journalist is a jerk.

Obviously, we're really upset about the state of the election. It's horrifying, as everybody knows, that we could have a totally fascist president.

I feel like that when I read certain feminist blogs or feminist magazines, where it's not even so much we've gone backwards, it's that I'm bored. Or it's like, oh wow, kids today are still dealing with the same exact issues.

If I were a supervillain, I would end capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia... but I guess that's a little too obvious and not villain-y enough. Because that's actually being a superhero. I would break down poverty with my machete; I would end world hunger.

I think open adoption is a great idea, because it allows a relationship between the birth mother and her child so that the kid isn't like, "Where did I come from?" And to have it be like, "Look, you have a bunch of people who love you."

One of the reasons I went back to music even though I was extremely ill was because I started to forget who I was aside from being sick. And when I'm performing, or even lecturing, it's like I'm myself again, and that was a really amazing discovery - that, all of a sudden, I have a get-out-of-jail-free card.

You have these Stepford wives who are negating other women. But that's their job. [Donald] Trump is the one who is to blame, no matter how much I enjoy watching his surrogates fail massively.

In the '90s, people wore scrunchies, but it was very uncool in the punk scene.

The cool thing about the Internet is that it's allowing women more access to their own history.

I really love that I'm giving myself the opportunity finally to not have the pressure of every single song you do having to be "political" or whatever. I'm just making what I wanna make.

I almost wish we would've filmed a whole fake tampon commercial around ["I'm With Her"].

No one's female and male, we all have so many different traits. It's just a lie that these certain traits are male and these certain traits are female.

I didn't go to high school, I didn't go to college, I didn't have women's studies. All of my feminist ideals and education have been built around art and my friends and community. And so it's still growing.

The only thing I collect is art. I collect it because I like looking at it. A lot of it is really personal stuff that my friends have made, paintings that my husband's mother made, and things that I bought. I buy abstract art on eBay, and I buy some outsider art on eBay, or what is called folk art, I buy a lot of. I have a lot of professional art work as well as more stuff my friends' kids make. To have a wall of art to look at, I feel really surrounded by love, because so much of the work is related to my friendships.

A lot of artists are just really stupid about money, and it's really hard to find somebody who kind of thinks of shuffling money around and doing business as an art.

I made the decision that my contribution needed to be more musical than political. My music was enough, politically. Art matters. Art was enough. My music was enough to say what I had to say.

I don't like every other musician's work. The same way that filmmakers don't like every other filmmakers' work. Just because I'm a feminist doesn't mean I'm gonna say that I like every other woman's work, or that I appreciate another statement that another woman publicly made.

I'm really going off of watching John Waters speak one time and I remember he just kind of talked and it was totally interesting. I wanted to hear about his life and how he got started and when did he think he made it, stupid stuff like that. And what his relationship with the mainstream is because he's so far out there, but then he became part of the mainstream in this weird way. He was really funny, though. Yeah, I have to work on my jokes.

I think the [fan] access is complicated, because it brings wonderful things into my life, and it brings really negative things into my life. I just try to keep the negative stuff at arm's length. Laugh at it and walk away.

Sometimes, being a feminist artist, there are times where I'm in a position where I just want to feel like I'm saying all the right things politically, or I feel like I have to mention my own project over other people's projects.

I think that feminism is in cycle. Feminism rotates between backlash and interest.

I got hit up for a tampon commercial and so I asked [JD and Jo] if they had anything. Jo sent that over and I was like, "I love this track. Oh my god. It's so upbeat. It's so positive. It would be so great for a tampon commercial." That commercial never came through, so then I just had it. I was like, "That would be great for a Hillary [Clinton] song." I think it's so funny that it could be a tampon commercial.

I realized that calling yourself a feminist or not calling yourself a feminist, just by being in a band of all girls, it's all you talk about.

I need to see my friends or I'm gonna go crazy. I'm not gonna stay home and work.

Whatever your personality was before, an illness makes it that plus a thousand. I'm a very binary person in a bad way where it's like everything is either totally great or totally awful. I don't understand grey area that well, and I've been working at that.

I don't like being in the service industry and having to deal with people yelling at me all the time. McDonald's was the hardest job I ever had - so I have a lot of respect for people who work in the fast food industry. Because it's a hard job.

I realized that I really enjoy writing comedy, and how important comedy is when you feel like total crap.

I was like, "Oh my god, I hope you're secretly grossed out about everything that [Donald] Trump has been doing." But why is it such a shock to anybody? He's said so many things that show who he is and how ignorant he is from the beginning.

I felt like going out on the road and mixing it with music - which is something young people are always really interested in - would be a good way to proselytize. It was like feminist evangelism.

The exciting thing about getting a label together and doing press for it is that hopefully some 15-year-old girl who is the only feminist in her junior-high class will hear about it and be like, "Oh, cool, I hadn't heard of that, I'm going to check it out."

Every day it gets worse and worse and worse. We just want to get everyone to vote and be a part of the noise. I can't do phone banks because I have to save my voice for stage, so the least I can do is a song.

My illness has changed me - I've always thought "life is short and I wanna make as much of it as I can," but I really don't have time to mess around. This has really been a wake-up call in terms of what's important, and I'm working hard to figure that out. I need to get better at not doing favors for people all the time. It's hard because there's so many people who have helped me get to the point where I'm in a band that people wanna come see, or where people pay money to see me lecture.

We support Hillary [Clinton]. We're saying that strongly. "I'm with her," I don't think that we can be any less strident. She's the best person for the job.

The idea that musicians/artists have a responsibility to be community leaders or "role models" is problematic to me because I really believe that some of the most exciting art is not community-minded at least in any obvious or direct way, which is not to say that it is not ethical or consciousness-changing.

I think that it's so powerful for me to go see someone like Bridget Everett at Joe's Pub and watch her weave her songs in and out of these funny, tragic stories - you can talk and sing and it's not this horrible offense, you're going to get thrown in artistic jail.

Most of my records are never going to be commercial successes, and I don't expect that. It's just all a learning process to me. If something appears as a failure, fine. If there's success, fine. I like the record, and my friends like the record, and that's kind of all I can really care about.

Sexism and racism and homophobia and classism are so naturalized. All these stereotypes make people think it's just normal that straight white men are getting all the breaks.

I'm a very binary person in a bad way where it's like everything is either totally great or totally awful.

I don't appreciate it when women - or men - bandy about these stupid stereotypes about feminism that are age-old, and that are meant to keep people turned off from it. It's like, "All you have to do is Wikipedia feminism to know that it's not about man-hating - so shut up." That makes me annoyed.

Taking care of yourself is the most important thing.

I think my biggest fear is dying. Although sometimes my biggest fear is not dying. But yeah, I think health stuff for me is more what I'm afraid of.

I've always talked a lot on stage - I really wanted to communicate my ideas and when you're playing at a lot of shitty punk clubs they don't have good PAs and so no one knows what you're singing about.

I'm not sure Riot Grrrl would have been as big a deal if the Internet had existed back then. Because there's so much stuff on the Internet. People could have been like, oh, whatever, I'm going to go look at pictures of Barbie vaginas, you know what I mean? There's so many different things on the Internet, you read one article and then you read something linked off that article and you go down the rabbit hole.

I know what a good question would be for an actor. What's your least favorite thing that you've ever heard an actor say about acting? Or about being in a movie?

I'm sure if you see things you wrote when you were 19, you cringe. I saw stuff like angry poetry that I wrote when I was mad at my father, or photos I took where I smeared period blood on myself. It's embarrassing.

I search the phrase "Kellyanne Conway fails," and I'm just watching that Scottie [Nell Hughes] woman smirk all the time.

When you're the person who's kind of in charge of everything a lot of the time, it's sometimes nice to get bossed around. It's sometimes nice to have somebody say, "This is what I want you to do" and to stretch your abilities.

It takes your mind off things when there's a cat in your lip and he's purring while you're petting him.

I always wanted to play music, but my family was more interested in handing me paints and markers. Art was always my favorite subject in school, and I can remember staying up all night drawing as a small child. My expression via art was extremely strong as I grew and hasn't stopped.

I wouldn't want to play Miss Hannigan. I'm not a villain. She's mean to little children! I can't do that. That would disrupt my brand.

I stood in the bay window at our house and I sang Away In A Manger. It was my first time on stage, but there was nobody watching. I just remember it was so natural and it was such a secret - like masturbating. I felt like I had to wait until everybody was gone. So I guess six years old would be my most important age, 'cause in that moment, I just knew what I wanted to do.