Courtney Love Quotes

I always took myself really seriously... but sometimes I’d be at a venue and the guy would call me ‘sweetie’ or ‘honey’ when we were doing drums and stuff. I’d carry the drums in myself so people wouldn’t say I was a bitch. I went very briefly to an engineering school, so I knew the difference between white noise and pink noise and what a view meter was, and a logs player and things like that. I didn’t need to know but it came in handy when I was sitting with Steve Albini like ‘really? Is that a good logs player?’ I barely know what it is, but I learned "Smoke On The Water" so I could go to Guitar Center and play that and not have guys look at me. It was a different time—I think girls get taken a lot more seriously now.

Every time that I sell myself to you
I feel a little bit cheaper than I need to
I will tear the petals off of you
Rose red, I will make you tell the truth

I've always been provocative toward guys like that. They're lame, and they make it not fun for nerdy guys and nerdy girls and uncool people. They're like these self-righteous jock pricks up at the front, and they come there just to razz you— to tell you that they have a boner, or that they want to see your tits, or that you're ugly, or that you're a whore or something. They're ridiculous.

The devil's driving my car tonight, and he's drunk
He's pissed, he's mad
I don't care which of you he fucks up

America's Sweetheart was my one true piece of shit. It has no cohesive thread. I just hate it.

I punched out Kathleen Hanna... Sonic Youth brought her. I punched her, and she screamed, "I'll take you on, any college in America, any feminist debate," and I said, "But Kathleen, that means you're going to have to read!"

I finally learned from Fred Durst, who is [of] my generation, that "selling out" means every ticket at The Forum got sold. I don't think Britney [Spears] and Christina [Aguilera] sit there agonizing over their record sales. The [term] "sell out" needs to be eradicated from the language, because if you don't "sell out," guess what? An asshole will.

I don’t like coming to Seattle much. I talked to [Chris] Cornell about it not that long ago. And Jerry Cantrell. None of us like it. It is beautiful, objectively. The arboretum is great. But it freaks me out for obvious reasons. I didn’t really live there. I lived behind a gate. I would try to go up to [Pike Place] Market. My big expedition would be Urban Outfitters and the yoga store.

The American male runs half of the global world and grows up on rock music from day one. If you can alter the psyche of someone who's growing up to be a rapist or a total misogynist, you're creating values and instead of making the void bigger, you're making it smaller.

I didn't ever really talk until I started hanging out in '80 or '81 with the drag queens at the Metropolis [or Met, a gay new wave club] in Portland. I was very, very quiet. So much so that at one point when I was very young I was diagnosed as a probable autistic. And then I started hanging around with bitchy drag queens and with [my friends] Ursula and Robin, and they basically raised me. I found my inner bitch and I ran with her.

You know what? I was doing Loveline on KROQ, and Lydia [Lunch] sent this fax in that said like, “You’ll never be smarter than me. Stop trying to copy me." So I read it out over the air and I said, "Lydia, I’ve been copying you since I fucking heard of you. You’re the best thing on the planet. I give you more tribute than anybody else and I love you and I wish you wouldn’t be so mad at me. And, Lydia, if there’s anything I can do for you – if there’s any philosophical, tax deductible thing that I can contribute to – you know how to get in touch with me."

And the sky was all violet
I want it again, but violent, more violent
I'm the one with no soul
One above and one below

I wore a dress that was so restricting and shoes that were five inches high, I could barely stage-dive. Then I got the best write-ups, for being feminine, I guess. I couldn’t move well and I was restrained, which equals great review. That’s pretty horrid.

My brother, Toby, is six-foot-six, [and] he [went to] Vassar; my other brother, Brown; my sister, without one penny from me or my [step]dad, NYU Law, number one in her class—Jesus, it's such a functional family, I don't know where I came from.

I love being around people that are smarter than me, that think faster than me. So even if you're a dork, and you wear stupid clothes, and you make a fool of yourself, and everyone makes fun of you, and you're just an idiot—I don't care about the context. I don't care. If you're genius and I recognize it, I kind of dig that.