Quotes from Kim Gordon

Now that I no longer live in New York, I don't know if I could ever move back. All that young-girl idealism is someone else's now. That city I know doesn't exist anymore, and it's more alive in my head than it is when I'm there.

People pay money to see others believe in themselves." Meaning, the higher the chance you can fall down in public, the more value the culture places on what you do.

by using the word 'empowered' to describe women, men are simply maintaining their own power and control.

In the early eighties, there were a lot of artists involved with the music scene. All those young artists, before their careers took off, were into music. Robert Longo used to play some guitar. He had a band for a while. Basquiat had a band. I mean, people were always trying to mix music and art - in fact, I'm guilty of it myself.

I don't have any desire to do something that sounds explicitly rock. Like, I don't have a burning need to be a rock musician. I feel like I've taken that as far as I can take it, for me.

Women make natural anarchists and revolutionaries, because they've always been second-class citizens, kinda having had to claw their way up.

Women are natural anarchists...

At the end of the day, women are expected to hold up the world, not annihilate it.

I spent a lot of time vacillating between wanting to be seen as attractive, being terrified by too much attention, and wanting to succeed and fit in without anyone's noticing me.

And then, I was thinking of doing a record just like starting with voice, because I did this one song that was just kind of a cappella, and I did it for this art piece I did where people could come and play music to go with a voice.

I mean, most of it is probably more obscure and just more noisy than either of those two bands, but Thurston has stuff all the time that he's involved with that is fairly obscure and experimental.

I was very aware of performers who have a persona, whether it's Siouxsie Sioux or Patti Smith or Lydia Lunch, and I'm just this middle-class girl coming from a more conventional upbringing, this California person. But in a way I felt like it's important to represent the normal.

It's hard to say when the life of a band starts and stops... but playing music together is an act of trust. When that's broken, it's impossible to continue.

I don't see myself as a rock star. I don't see myself in that way. I'm interested in work that offers some sort of critical dialogue.

I've never been good with structure - doing assignments for the sake of them or doing things I'm supposed to do.

Political art never goes away. I started watching The West Wing show recently and I'm actually learning about how the government works in a way. It's kind of embarrassing.

I watch 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' with my daughter. We're very into Buffy and Buffy's friends.

Recently some work I made could be seen as feminist art or work that relates to the body. That's just what I'm feeling - like it needs to be done.

I grew up listening to John Coltrane and jazz, so they were subtle influences. I sometimes think about doing some kind of weird jazz record, but I don't know... It's on my list of things to do. I don't want to have to then go promote it.

I don't really feel comfortable anywhere except when I'm working alone at home. It's exhausting to be out around people.