This page is for all the sayings I have come up with. I give credit to GDA and Vital Signs for them. Enjoy!
American Idiot sayings:
[On the new album] "We needed to evolve."
[On American Idiot] "It can definitely be a soundtrack to a revolution -- we've seen it done in the past. It just depends on how ambitious people are with it."
[On American Idiot's lack of controversy] "I guess that means more people agree with what we're saying than we had anticipated." [laughs].
"In my humble opinion, this is an album that's more ambitious than what's going on in rock right now. It's more flamboyant. It takes things a step further. That's something people have been missing."
"There's a through story line about St. Jimmy, about how he comes of age in the world that surrounds him. It's not about pointing fingers. It's about wanting to declare your individuality."
[The American Idiot Creation] ''I pretty much started writing the whole album in order,'' says Armstrong. ''After I wrote 'Jesus of Suburbia' [Idiot's other five-part mini-suite], there was no going back.''
''The big challenge was, How do we do something that ambitious? I didn't want anyone to listen to American Idiot and think, Oh my God, this is so far removed from what Green Day is.''
"I think in rock music, a lot of bands haven't really been stepping up to the plate so much, without mentioning any names. There's bands that just straight up aren't political and I respect that. That's fine, If you wanna make your boring music, go ahead. No, just kidding [laughs]. We weren't always a political band. This is the first time we've ever really stepped out and done this."
Enviromental sayings:
"Every once in a while, more frequently now that global warming is heating up, the Earth makes clear who's really in charge. Especially the ocean. Even seeing my kids out in the water, wherever we're at — it's like here's this tiny little speck of human life and this giant, enormous ocean. I mean, not even a gun can puncture something like that."
"There were a lot of political people there, and the environment was one of the issues that people talked about. Especially coming from such a highly polluted area, in Rodeo — it's a refinery town, and we ended up getting sent home from school because kids were having headaches and nobody could understand why. When, of course, 200 yards away from the elementary school that I went to was the biggest refinery in America."
"The older that this generation of kids gets, they're thinking up more and more ways for kids to be indoors and away from anything outside, so a lot of these industries can cause damage to the environment. Look how many kinds of television stations are just applied to kids, that are advertised to kids right now. The distraction is starting so kids won't have the chance to judge for themselves what's going on in the environment."
"There's a lot of kids who are getting into our band for the first time, so we're bringing out somebody like Greenpeace or Amnesty International to show what these injustices are. I mean, when we're creating a giant hole in the ozone layer, we are the product of our own demise."
"To share an organization like USA Harvest, which is basically a canned-food drive ... it's not a big deal, it's very easy. ... Then it comes down to daily things that you do, whether it's composting or recycling or driving low-emission vehicles. I mean I still haven't given up hope that ... that someone out there will have a heart, you know?"
Family sayings:
"I know what it's like being a kid. Being a kid fucking sucks. The last thing I want for Joey is for him to be known as my son. I'd rather keep the magazines and the fame away from him. Which will be impossible, but I think it's really important for him to develop his own identity. Let him make his own mistakes. I'd rather be the station wagon kind of parent, you know, like going to Wally World. I just want to be a normal dad."
"Being a parent is the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my whole life. I'm totally self-conscious all the time, making sure I don't scream in front of Joey, trying to keep some sort of comfortable atmosphere for him. I'm not used to that. I'm usually like 'arrrgghh!'"
"I'm trying to keep up my end of the bargain," says Armstrong. "It takes two, you know, a mom and a dad. Adrienne's an amazing mom. Mothers have got the worst jobs in the whole world. And I never realized that until I had a kid. I don't care what you do, or what job you complain about. Try to be a mother. You won't last a fucking day."
"I'm the epitome of a latchkey kid," says Armstrong, the youngest of six children. "By the time my mom, who had me when she was 40, got around to raising me, she was like, 'You do what you want, I'm sick of being strict all the time.'"
"One thing I want to teach my son is sensitivity to other people. I want to teach him not to be this macho freak."
"Only a few days before he drew his last breath, he gave me my first guitar. He gave it a name - Blue - because it was a blue fender Stratocaster copy. It ended up battered, covered in duct tape and stickers, because I played it so much. It's become my trademark and I still use replicas on stage and in videos. My dad wouldn't have believed where that first guitar has lead. We're just a fuck-all, know-nothing band from California. He'd have shaken his head in disbelief."
"My dad wouldn't have believed where that first guitar has lead. We're just a fuck-all, know-nothing band from California. He'd have shaken his head in disbelief."
"Adrienne is the only woman I will ever love."
"I am not really into groupies as I have a wonderful wife to keep me company."
"I'm a father now. I have a certain responsibility. It isn't just my life anymore. I don't want my kid finding bottles in the house or seeing his father completely smashed. I don't want him to get the impression that his father is a drunk, a bum. Having children is a big responsibility and I don't want to make a mess out of it. I don't want my son thinking that I care more for booze than I care for him. If you have children, you don't want to have drugs and drinks in the house. You know they might reach it. It's just not good."
Humor sayings:
"I kind of became everyone's weird uncle. I was drunk all the time, wearing a fucking leopard g-string."
"With the video for Boulevard of Broken Dreams we were going for something a bit like Ladykillers, you know? Pretty and demented at the same time...like me!"
"What do you mean we walked around dressed like girls? They were our own clothes, they just happened to be dresses..."
[Asked: What's one of the secrets to keeping the band together?] "Circle massage... we like to massage each other."
[On participating on Tony Hawk video game] "For somebody who doesn't know how to skateboard, I'm going to be ripping it up."
[2005 VMAs] "We met Mr. Scrappy, we saw the boys in Good Charlotte — we've seen a lot of gold teeth."
"My name is George W. Bush." [boos] "My name is asshole." [cheers]
"You know the Rolling Stones...Well, we're a little bit better than them. They were here in Toronto practicing. We were there. Keith Richards, who's at least 60, had the biggest joint I've ever seen. Of course, I smoked it!"
"How old are you?" Fan: "18." Have you ever been laid?" [fan is speechless] "Well, you're gonna get laid tonight!"
"If I'm into something I have to make sure it gets done. If I do drugs, I make sure that pile of fucking speed is done before the night is over."
"We have fun onstage. I'm not going to be this fucking melodramatic smashing pumpkins moron."
"[Our 'Waiting' video] was totally a failure. [MTV] doesn't show any videos anymore. If we had a booty video - if we had, like, McG, with girls shaking their ass in the video -- it would probably get played. Actually, I am just really bitter right now."
"Yeah fuck me! I wish all of you could fuck me."
"You want a drumstick? Like a ice cream cone or a chicken wing?"
"My mom's got a cute ass! Total MILF."
"Do you have a problem? I have a gun. I'll shoot you. No more problem."
"If you can actually remember a good prank, then it never happened."
"A guy walks up to me and asks 'What's Punk?'. So I kick over a garbage can and say 'That's punk!'. So he kicks over the garbage can and says 'That's Punk?', and I say 'No that's trendy!"
"I sound like an Englishman impersonating an American impersonating an Englishman."
"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational; I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot."
"There's nothing wrong with being a loser, it just depends on how good you are at it."
"We put the fun back in dysfunctional."
"Punk rock is dead...and I fucking killed it."
"School is practice for the future, and practice makes perfect, and nobodies perfect, so why practice?"
"You say it to my face, you might be pickin' yourself off the ground."
"When someone is in a car accident and they're driving at 100 mph, drunk, who's tape do you think he's listening to at that time? Think about it."
"Just about 99% of the population masturbates while the other 1%, lie about it."
"What? You can heckle me if you want, it's okay I won't understand!" (at a foreign concert)
"A lot of people, when they talk to me, I can't wait for them to shut up. Like, shut up. You're a moron. I have nothing to say, you know?"
"Well, you know, I look at myself in the morning and yes, yeah I-I am a God."
Music sayings:
"Mike wrote 'Longview' sitting on the floor, on LSD."
"Rock bands are such pussies, you know? I honestly think that people are looking for something that's more than just a piece of shit."
"Rock Music is about rebellion. It's supposed to be dangerous, and that's the side we choose. We're not looking to make everyone happy."
"Punk sometimes has this defeatist attitude where you can't expand. I look at a band like U2 that started out more or less as a punk band but kept expanding and wound up being one of the biggest bands in the world. And I think it's okay to want that.''
"I think that Pansy Division is the kind of band that saves people's lives," says Armstrong. "They're catchy, and they're really educational. They're honest about their sexuality and that saves lives."
"We've seen a lot of genres come and go since 'Dookie,'" he explains. "There has been hip-hop metal and the Warped tour generation and emo. We just went straight through it. We would play festivals over the years and we'd be lower on the bill than some bands who were the flavor of the moment. But we just always wanted one thing - to be the best band up there."
"Rock 'n' roll can be dangerous and fun at the same time."
"Sometimes I think we've become totally redundant because we're this big band now, we've made a lot of money - we're not punk rock any more. But then I think about it and just say, 'You can take us out of out a punk rock environment, but you can't take the punk rock out of us.' When we started it was a proven fact that punk could not get popular. So we never played punk rock to get famous."
"You know if journalists ask you again and again the same questions about the same bands, then you'll end up saying that you hate them – even if you don't – just because you're so fed up with being asked all those stupid questions. People just take it too seriously."
"Punk is not just the sound, the music. Punk is a life-style. There are a lot of bands around who claim to be punk and they only play the music, they have no clue what it's all about. It's a life-style I chose for myself. It's not about popularity and all that crap. When we started out as a band, we played punk rock, the music. [Then] we changed our sound, but we didn't change. We're just as much punk as we used to be. We got a lot of shit, and we're still getting it, for being signed with a major label. So what? We didn't start the band to cash in a lot of money. When we started out, punk was probably the most unpopular music around."
"What annoys the hell out of me is the arrogance of some people. They don't even listen to our music, they decided in advance that they don't like it. You know even before we finished the album, before anybody ever heard just one track, some people had decided that it will suck. I don't give a shit about them. If they can't appreciate good music, it's their own fault."
"We're not into that whole ska scene. Operation Ivy is the only ultimate ska-punk band out there. They're the real thing. To listen to another band would be like... like... yeah like preferring an Oasis album over a Beatles album."
Personal sayings:
"I write a lot about being a loser because I was conditioned to think that way."
"All problems are all the same essentially, they're just packaged differently the older that you get."
"My job description is that I'm a rock star. And I'm good at it."
[On sexual preference] "I really don't think you have to tell anybody about that. It's only sexuality, it doesn't have a lot to do with you as a person. I've never had to tell my mother about what I am. She's seen me kiss other guys and I'm married so I don't know what I would classify myself as...human? I garuntee everybody fantasizes about the same sex. It's only human."
[On the band's near breakup] "It was stuff like Tre telling me 'Welcome to Paradise' was a shitty song, and me getting pissed when they made fun of me."
"I may be immature, but I am responsible."
"I think I've always been bisexual."
"I'm not really educated enough to write about AIDS, but I could certainly write about losing someone who's close to me. I'm more the type of person who would write about how ignorant and stupid people are about something like AIDS."
"I fucking hate college students, to tell you the truth, because they've been able to go to school, get an education, live in the dorms, and get a free ride from their parents. I'm also envious, because I never had that opportunity to learn. I wrote a song on the new album called 'Brat' about waiting for your parents to die so you can get your inheritance. Which my son will probably be singing one day himself."
"The fucked-up thing about being famous and having money is that if you complain about something, people are like, 'What the fuck are you complaining about? You don't have to work a real job. You don't have to worry about money, or a place to live.' I feel like I don't have anyone to vent my frustrations to because they won't understand."
"Take Armatage Shanks, for example. When I wrote that song, it was right before Dookie came out, and I was really at odds with myself. I was like, man, do I really want to do this? A lot of the time I was thinking about suicide, how it's so easy to kill yourself, but so hard to stay alive. I was in a break-up with my then-girlfriend, a total, raving punk rocker who didn't approve of me being on a major label. She moved down to Ecuador, saying she couldn't live in a world with McDonald's and such. It was fucking me up pretty bad."
I think we're actually a very friendly band. How many other bands stop shows if they see a kid falling in the pit? A lot of bands don't care about that. I want everybody to have a good time at a concert. I don't want anybody getting hurt. That's punk, playing a show, having a party, having a good time.
"School for me, was holding me back from what I really wanted to do. I wanted to be in a band and I wanted to be a punk."
"I never thought that being obnoxious would get me where I am now."
"I hate celebrities. I really hate them."
"I actually have less friends now than I ever had."
Political sayings:
"We never said anything that wasn't the truth. We've always just spoken from our heart and our gut instinct. And what anyone with half a brain can understand is that this country's made up of a lot of different opinions, and that's what the country is based on. Mine just happens to be very much to the left."
"It's more of a discussion. It's not about whether who's right or wrong, it's about taking in the information and finding your own individual opinion. It's our opinion, and I think that's a very American thing to do."
[Dallas, TX Show] "This is not a red state, and this is not a blue state. This is a Green Day state.”
"You watch a journalist embedded in Iraq, and then switch the channel and see an ad for Viagra, and you end up confused. It's hard not to feel duped."
"People are starting to see that it's not what they were led to believe. So I think now in the popular culture, people are starting to get the guts to come out and declare that they oppose this war."
"If you're going to stop terrorism, you don't attack countries. You keep them from going into poverty and famine and then you relieve them of debt."
"You don't look at yourself as the greatest country in the world, but the greatest asset to the world. That's how you build a stronger country here and stronger allies, instead of people that have no respect for Western culture."
"You're the fucking leaders, you have the power. Don't let these bastards dictate the rest of the world, or dictate your own fucking life!"
"It's scary anytime you start to throw your opinion around a little bit at the end of the day. So many are afraid to talk about politics, but that's sort of the time that we're in right now."
"We have a president whose only purpose is to make himself and his friends richer."
"I think the little Bush is a bit stupid and more or less the puppet of his old man."
"It's a team of culprits," Armstrong says of the album's targets. But in conversation he singles out President Bush. "I find him more a threat to the western world than Saddam Hussein."
"My main problem with a lot of the other artists that are talking about politics is that they aren't declaring themselves as opposite to what they see. They're the equivalent of moderate candidates."
"Well, it's a culture war, and the country's divided, and there's a lot of confusion. And to be a kid growing up nowadays is pretty scary, because there are a lot of different things pulling you. And this war that's going on in Iraq that's basically to build a pipeline and put up a fucking Wal-Mart. It's a lot of information, and it's not only confusing for my kids, it's confusing for adults, too. Everybody just sort of feels like they don't know where their future is heading right now, you know?"
"We pride ourselves on being a band that's connected to politics, or helping out in any way that we can as far as people who are less fortunate than us."
"George Bush is more of a threat to the world than Saddam Hussein ever was,"
"I don't know, but I had an idea. I think how America votes on 'American Idol,' the next presidential election they should vote in the same way and have a massive TV show that's once a week that keeps you updated. ... The new way of voting. Screw singers. Let's go for the politicians this time."
Sport sayings:
"My Dad would take me to see the A's play and I remember watching the last Super Bowl that Oakland was in before it went down to Los Angeles. The Raiders played the Eagles and I remember Kenny King scoring a long touchdown down the sideline. We grew up in the East Bay so there were 49ers fans and Raiders fans. All the tough guys in school wore Raiders hats. All the 49ers fans got beat up the Raiders fans when I was in high school."
"The next night we played in Worcester, put on Red Sox hats and played We Are the Champions. That was probably the smartest thing I've ever done."
"I ended up scoring the only touchdown pass the last game of the season. The lowlight was the first kickoff of the season. I received it. All of a sudden these monsters were running after me. I remember running down the sideline and getting past all these guys. I was just running for the fear of God. All of a sudden I was on the opposing team's sideline and I got blasted. I looked up and it was the fucking kicker. That set the tone for the entire season. Me running out for passes and getting blasted by free safeties."
"I started getting into punk rock music. I started to hate the jocks. Blah. Blah. Blah. My brother David was a great athlete and I knew there was no way I could live up to that. I knew I could play guitar. I started getting into music and my grades got really bad."
"Sometimes I think the steriod use gets sort of out of hand. It's steroids, it sucks, guys injecting themselves. At the same time I feel the media blows it out of proportion too. And I think people then lose interest because they can't find anything honest in sport. For kids, instead of trying to keep it under raps to a certain degree, this is what they hear. That baseball players and NFL players are all fucking junkies. It just gets blasted out of proportion and the kids don't find any positive things going on. No wonder the Oakland A's can't pack the Coliseum."
"I took my kid to see his first baseball game at SBC Park and I went to see the Rolling Stones there and a couple of years later. Now here I am to do my own headline show. Amazing."
"The thing I love about is that the athletes nowadays are such amazing physical specimens. The things that people do now in sports, you can't even believe. These are complete total athletes. To see what human beings can do in the highest level is amazing."
"It's the way that athletes go from team to team all the time regardless if it's the money. I like the fact that you know Brett Favre will retire a Green Bay Packer. I like the fact that he's a franchise player. I think there's that sort of loyalty. You look at Favre and he has that loyalty to his team no matter what. The lack of loyalty, whether it comes from the owners or players, that's the part that bums you out."
Touring sayings:
[On Green Day slash fanfiction] "Tre reads the dirty ones. I've read a few. It's flattering and sort of weird at the same time. I don't really know what to think about young girls thinking about old men like that. But the ones I have read were very well-written and as long as kids these days are still being creative and writing, then I think it's cool."
"Stand up in the back row! This is not television, this is a fucking rock ’n’ roll show!"
[Regarding the 2005 VMAs] "I have to be prepared to be a gracious loser. I probably have more experience as the gracious loser than I do as the winner."
"Success isn't a destination, it's a journey."
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