The 18 Best Joan Jett Quotes

Joan Jett oozes rock and roll.

Videos by American Songwriter

She is snarl incarnate.

She is just pulse and power and skill. We could listen to her sing the phone book. It would be as good as anything on television these days.

Surely, Jett is one of the biggest names in rock and roll. Heck, she sang the anthem about loving it, which will itself live on for millennia.

But while we’ve all heard Jett sing into a microphone and cause explosions left and right, what about her thoughts outside of songs? What might she have to say about life, love, and the world around her? That’s what we wanted to dive into and investigate here.

So, without further ado, music fans, below are the Top 18 Joan Jett Quotes.

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

2. “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.”

3. “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.”

4. “You got nothing to lose. You don’t lose when you lose fake friends.”

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

6. “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.”

7. “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.”

8. “I grew up in a world that told girls they couldn’t play rock ‘n’ roll.”

9. “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.”

10. “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.”

11. “I don’t look good in beige.”

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

13. “Nobody knows what anticipation is anymore. Everything is so immediate.”

14. “I feel like it’s my job to carry the torch.”

15. “Pop music is not a threatening style of music.”

16. “Rock ‘n’ roll music is what gets me off.”

17. “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.”

18. “I’ll be working until I die.”

See Joan Jett’s Upcoming Concerts HERE.

Photo by Thos Robinson/Getty Images for USO of Metropolitan New York