Joan Jett

So it was out of necessity that Blackheart was born. I think it's great that now, 25 years later, we're not only putting out our own music, but are able to put out music by other bands. That's really exciting for us.

I figured out it was a social thing, what women were allowed to do. At a very young age, I decided I was not going to follow women's rules.

I do not knowingly kill any living thing - including insects or rodents - and I thank my food for sustaining me.

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 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 think I look better in darker clothes. And maybe the fact that I wear black so much makes me more aware of putting people at ease.

The follow your dreams thing is really important because so many people are railroaded into taking other paths by their family, their friends, people who should be supportive going, 'What are you talking about?' Even just seemingly regular career paths, but if it's not what people expect for you they kind of react funny.

You got nothing to lose. You don't lose when you lose fake friends.

I sure saw a lot of kids that I'm sure didn't know a lot about us, or we were definitely new to them. The kids who came up to me afterward, we'd talk about music, sign a lot of autographs. So I'm sure we made a lot of new fans.

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.

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.

People are very sincere in their praise, and you can't take it lightly.

Factory farming is one of the biggest contributors to the most serious environmental problems. The meat industry causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, planes and ships in the world.

I think I was born strong willed. Thats not the kind of thing you can learn. The advantage is you stick to what you believe in and rarely get pushed out of what you want to do.

So now 20 years later people want us to get together so they can take shots at all these old babes trying to get back some youth. I mean come on; I've been there. I know what the press would do.

I love school. I was a great student.

Rock 'n' roll music is what gets me off.

I think it's important to have mystique.

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.

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.

Success isn't one straight line - it's a ladder, and there's always another rung above you to reach out for. Like anything else, there are ups and downs.

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.

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

And you have a record company behind it, this is a key too, you need people to fight for your records, at least a little bit. So if you have a great song, it's catchy, and you've got a little bit of help, I think that's all you need. But there hasn't been that in music.

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

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

Why there aren't people out there willing to have fun playing rock 'n' roll. I just don't get it.

I have a tough time judging myself.

I love sports. I love animals. I love kids. I want to save the world. So how do I combine all those things? I don't know.

I don't like to say where I'll be in 10 years.

God, I always just think of myself as a jeans and T-shirt kind of person.

I love to engage with people who come to see us.

Def Leppard is obviously a different band that we are, but the music work well tighter. And the audiences seem work well together too. We are opening, but we're having a good time.

Women are still second-class citizens.

Cutting meat out of your diet is the best thing you can do for animals and your own health.

People don't want to see women doing things they don't think women should do.

Partly, I like a bad reputation. But I also want a reputation of being a good person.

I don't look good in beige.

I'm having fun opening up. Sort of struggling to get the audience into it. It's good. It makes you fight. Not fight like antagonistic. But fight for what you believe.

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.

Anyone who wants to know who I am can just read my lyrics - I've always written about who I am.

I wouldn't say no to other kinds of musical opportunities. I guess that it just depends on what it was or what it required me to do, and if I felt that it compromised my own soul.

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.

You follow any family around, you're going to see elation, you're going to see disharmony.

For me the challenge isn't to be different but to be consistent.

Blackheart Records being 25 years old represents staying power and the fact that we weren't able to get a record out through conventional means, so we had to create this record company to put out our records if we wanted to be a band that had records to give out to their fans.

I've been doing this stuff for so long it's the one aspect of my life that I've paid attention to and really sort of not paid attention to the rest of it.

Girls see these defined roles they're supposed to follow in life, but when I was a young child, my parents told me I could be anything.

Girls have got balls. They're just a little higher up that's all.

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

Performance-wise, you really need to be down in the trenches; you need to do the hard work, for a lot of reasons: To build yourself as a performer, to get a sense of the audience, to work hard and to wonder, 'Do I really want to do this?'

I bought one of those Learn How to Play Guitar Chords By Yourself and it shows you the diagram where to put your hands and I took that in my room, sat with my singles and learned how to play guitar.

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

I grew up in a world that told girls they couldn't play rock 'n' roll.

I'm not a list person.

You know, I have a really tough time finding new bands.

You've got to fight for what you believe in. If you don't try, you'll always wonder, and that's a horrible way to live.

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.

I'm concentrating on staying healthy, having peace, being happy, remembering what is important, taking in nature and animals, spending time reading, trying to understand the universe, where science and the spiritual meet.

I've done some acting and a lot of different things, but mostly it's the music.

I like the way black looks. I think I look better in darker clothes. And maybe the fact that I wear black so much makes me more aware of putting people at ease. The black is sort of the bad-guy guise, so I work overtime to make people comfortable.

I think there's nothing better than seeing a three-chord straight up rock 'n' roll band in your face with sweaty music and three minute good songs.

I leave for the show at least an hour ahead, and I do some vocal warm-ups, and that's pretty much it.

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.

It's easier to sit there and say you don't like feminists because they don't have a sense of humor.

You got nothing to lose. You dont lose when you lose fake friends.

I'm a good person.

I think I was born strong-willed. That's not the kind of thing you can learn. The advantage is, you stick to what you believe in and rarely get pushed out of what you want to do.

Nobody knows what anticipation is anymore. Everything is so immediate.

My guitar is not a thing. It is an extension of myself. It is who I am.

When I came back to it, we amicably separated from Warner Bros. I just picked up where I left off, trying to write the rest of this record. It took awhile to get out.

I know music is subjective.

Even though everybody's lives are different, in general we're all human beings, and we go through the same things: disappointments, the pleasures of life, life and death. That's always been a really big part of the show to me, making sure the audience feels connected, and that carries through to the album.

We were really grown up for our age and it was an incredible special band.

I plan to stay in music. I plan to keep making records.

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

Things work in cycles.

I want to be singing to everybody, and I want everybody to think that I'm singing to them. Guys, girls and everyone in between.

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.

We all make judgments on people, but some are much more brutal than others. It's easy to say, 'Ya know, I'm not crazy about what she's wearing,' but you don't have to be nasty about it, and you don't have to be public about it.

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

Obviously, some people are thick, and they're not gonna see what they don't want to see.

We always play clubs. It's not something that I feel above. Those are my favorite shows because they're intimate, they're tight, their sweaty, they're hot. You're close to the people. Those are my favorites.

Egotistical people are not pretty. We all know that Im sure everybody knows an egotistical person someplace.

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