Kathleen Hanna Quotes

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Kathleen Hanna

Profession : Musician

Birth : November 12, 1969

I was making stickers for guys' bands. I was in the front row photographing bands, booking bands, doing all of the kind of backstage stuff, and I didn't even think for a second I could do it, and then I saw Babes in Toyland, and all that changed.

Kathleen Hanna

That's the great thing about music. You can find some '60s pop record and feel completely invigorated by it, even though it's so old.

Kathleen Hanna

Find something you really love doing and mix it with something you really care about. That's why I've had such longevity as an artist. I really, really care about ending violence against women, and I really, really love playing music. It's super enjoyable!

Kathleen Hanna

I go to lectures and girls are finding out about Bikini Kill or Le Tigre for the first time and are like,' This is my jam!' It still feels fresh to them.

Kathleen Hanna

I like loud snare, and I like really treble-y guitars, and that's just never going to change.

Kathleen Hanna

If people are like, 'Oh, you're an icon,' then whatever. But who thinks of themselves like that? It's not like I have posters of myself on the wall.

Kathleen Hanna

I know I love sexy surf guitars, I know I love loud snare. I love really simple repeating bass lines, and I love weird mad scientist keyboard sounds.

Kathleen Hanna

I can't constantly be trying to write the unwritten song, the song that the 15-year-old girl needs. I need to write the song that I need.

Kathleen Hanna

I always thought that putting tons of reverb on my voice was kind of the equivalent of airbrushing. And I wanted other girls and women to hear a real female voice that wasn't completely manipulated.

Kathleen Hanna

Singing is my life, and I have to do it, or I'm going to go totally bananas.

Kathleen Hanna

I'm in a really lucky position where people will be interested in whatever I do, but what I do is sing.

Kathleen Hanna

Defining art is huge; I feel like it's such a subjective thing. It's more like what's not art. You know what I mean? I think there can be an art in the way people live their lives, and art can be a gift someone gives to somebody.

Kathleen Hanna

I think music can definitely be art; I also think music can be crap and not be art.

Kathleen Hanna

Teachers are performers, just like I am.

Kathleen Hanna

I'm really annoyed by the wave of country music that's just a list of stuff. It almost sounds like L.A. people writing country music, because it's just a list of stuff: 'My pickup truck and my cowboy boots and my Levi's jeans and my girlfriend with the short shorts.' It's so boring!

Kathleen Hanna

If I can't sing them myself, there's nothing better than writing songs for other people and watching them be performed. It's kind of more thrilling than doing it yourself.

Kathleen Hanna

I would love to make a bunch of country demos and write country songs for really great country singers.

Kathleen Hanna

I have chronic - well, I like to call it late-stage Lyme disease and not chronic, because I like to think someday I'll be all the way cured. It took me a really long time to get diagnosed, and I was misdiagnosed for a long, long time. I was very ill during the end of Le Tigre, which was kind of why that ended, amongst other things.

Kathleen Hanna

I don't want to be a historical action figure or treated like I'm dead. Like one of those people where they go, 'Oh, isn't she dead?' And then I walk up, and they're like, 'Whoa.' I can't really complain... because I've made myself into a historical action figure. I was like, 'Yeah, come on in!'

Kathleen Hanna

You feel like people are looking at you like, 'I wanted the old Kathleen. Where's the old Kathleen?' I felt that way in the beginning of Le Tigre. I felt people were like, 'You're not angry enough anymore.' People still ask me that. 'Are you still angry?' I'm like, 'About what? About that question? Yes.'

Kathleen Hanna