Quotes from Joey Ramone

Rock n' roll is very special to me. It's my lifeblood.

The first record I bought may have been Del Shannon's 'Runaway.'

Well, I think we're the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world.

When a band like Blondie re-forms, you wish them the best.

One day I got a phone call, and Johnny and Dee Dee asked me if I wanted to join their band. I said, 'Yeah.'

Nobody picked up guns in those days. You put on music, and it made you feel great.

The Eagles and the Captain and Tennille ruled the airwaves, and we were the answer to it.

When I was a kid growing up in the '60s, music was an outlet for enlightenment, frustration, rebellion. It was more about individualism. Today it's just like a big business.

We decided to start our own group because we were bored with everything we heard... Everything was 10th-generation Led Zeppelin... Overproduced, or just junk. We missed music like it used to be.

When I was hitching, I'd be completely decked out. I used to wear this custom-made black jumpsuit, these, like, pink, knee-high platform boots, all kinds of rhinestones, lots of dangling belts and gloves.

Life to me is an adventure and you've got to experience everything.

What they teach you in school doesn't prepare you for life. Textbooks don't compare to living in the real world. Rock and roll teaches you how to live.

Twenty-twenty-twenty-four hours to goI wanna be sedatedNothing to do, nowhere to goI wanna be sedated

To me, John Lennon and Elvis Presley were punks, because they made music that evoked those emotions in people.

All punk is is attitude. That's what makes it. The attitude.

The thing about school is that if you're forced into learning stuff, you're not going to be into it.

I'd just sit with Dee Dee on the corner off of Queens Boulevard and drink and insult people and stuff. That's when I got kicked out of my house. My mother told me it was for my own good.

Play before you get good, because by the time you get good, you're too old to play

I remember being turned on to The Beach Boys, hearing 'Surfin' U.S.A.,' I guess, in 1960. But The Beatles really did it to me.

For better or worse, MTV sort of bridges the whole country together almost like the BBC does in England. It's opened up everything so wide that it's possible for everyone to have different ideas.

Forest Hills was a middle-class neighborhood filled with snobby rich people and their screaming brats.

Everybody's just emulated us and now everybody just kinda takes our sound as their foundations.

It was the glitter days, and the New York Dolls and Kiss would come play at the Coventry, all those bands would come in from Manhattan.

The Ramones own the fountain of youth. Experiencing us is like having the fountain of youth.