A punk concert isn’t fun without a pit. — Billie Joe Armstrong

A man once asked me, what’s punk? I kicked over a trash can and said that’s punk. He kicked over a trash can and then asked me again, Is that punk? I replied no. That’s just trendy. — Billie Joe Armstrong

Punk has always been about doing things your own way. What it represents for me is ultimate freedom and a sense of individuality. — Billie Joe Armstrong

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! — Billie Joe Armstrong

Punk is always something that’s going to be with us and to try and explain that would be stupid at this point. — Billie Joe Armstrong

Life isn’t pretty but it sure is beautiful. — Billie Joe Armstrong

Every night I play as if my life depends on it. — Billie Joe Armstrong

If I look at my old lyrics, they seem to be full of rage, but empty. There was an emptiness in my life. — Billie Joe Armstrong

It’s my fucking life and you know what, nobody invited you…so there’s the door…see ya! — Billie Joe Armstrong

Woodstock was about the closest thing to anarchy I’ve ever seen in my whole life, and I didn’t like it. — Billie Joe Armstrong

Punk will never be dead to me. It’s my life. I can never just drop this lifestyle. It embodies me. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I’m a father. It isn’t just my life any more. I don’t want my kid finding bottles in the house or seeing his father completely smashed. — Billie Joe Armstrong

Minority is about being an individual. It’s like you have to sift through the darkness to find your place and be that individual you want to be your entire life. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I know I’m always going to be a musician, for the rest of my life. That’s for sure. It’s about how you balance between being a musician and being a parent, and making it intertwined. — Billie Joe Armstrong

It’s not necessarily getting older or the change that comes with it, I think it’s more about the memories that you have. Where you can look at your life in these eras. — Billie Joe Armstrong

In one of the scenes [in the Ordinary World], you can see a little cameo of my son, who’s in the party. You’ve just gotta bring it all back home. — Billie Joe Armstrong

When I was done with the movie [Ordinary World], I felt really compelled to start working on another album. Little did I know, they were going to come out back to back. — Billie Joe Armstrong

The fact that I was taking naps in churches, in between takes of the [Ordinary World], and there was that guerilla style of filmmaking, I felt more at home with that. — Billie Joe Armstrong

No one’s really happy anyway, it’s not human. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I just want to write good songs that people love, which is a tough thing to do. — Billie Joe Armstrong

With my family, my sons both love music and play music, and they’re really good at it. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I love my friends and family, but playing, that’s my DNA. — Billie Joe Armstrong

In every song I write, whether it’s a love song or a political song or a song about family, the one thing that I find is feeling lost and trying to find your way. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I’d love to go to art school. I’d love to learn how to draw. I’d love to be fluent in Spanish. I’d like to be a brain surgeon. — Billie Joe Armstrong

To know you is to hate you, so loving you must be like suicide. — Billy Joe Armstrong

I don’t like LA. The majority just seem to be so artificial. Look at how they worship everything they think is fashionable. Isn’t it sick? — Billie Joe Armstrong

I have no idea where my career is going. I just make the best music that I possibly can. — Billie Joe Armstrong

Music–that’s been my education. There’s not a day that goes by that I take it for granted. — Billie Joe Armstrong

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. — Billie Joe Armstrong

This never gets old, and when it does, I’ll go do a movie. I like the fact that I can get into other projects because everything feels fresh when I come back to music. — Billie Joe Armstrong

Punk is not just the sound, the music. Punk is a lifestyle. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I don’t want to limit myself musically. It would be really limiting if we’d neglect something we really want to do, like explore other styles of music. — Billie Joe Armstrong

When I signed that major–label contract when I was 20 years old. I did it because I wanted to play music for the rest of my life. That’s every 20–year–old’s dream–to do whatever the hell you want. — Billie Joe Armstrong

The thing is, my education was music. I knew I’d be playing music no matter what. That’s all I thought about, I was obsessed with it. I’m still obsessed with it. It gets the best of me sometimes. — Billie Joe Armstrong

That’s where all good music comes from, I think–anything that’s likely to have an impact on pop culture comes from a point where there’s no expectation of it becoming anything other than personal. — Billie Joe Armstrong

We’re not a political band. We don’t want to tell people what to do or what to think. We just want to tell them to think. — Billie Joe Armstrong

We’ve been a band for 16 years. This is what you dream about. — Billie Joe Armstrong

My goal is to be one of the biggest bands in the world, and I have never been bashful about saying that. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I would definitely say the Oakland Raiders are the punk rock band of football. — Billie Joe Armstrong

There are a lot of bands who claim to be punk and they only play the music, they have no clue what it’s all about. It’s a lifestyle. It’s not about popularity and all that crap. — Billie Joe Armstrong

We pride ourselves on trying to put on the best show we can and we’re not afraid to say that we happen to be the best live band in the world. — Billie Joe Armstrong

If journalists ask you again and again about the same bands, you’ll end up saying you hate them just because you’re so fed up with being asked all those stupid questions. — Billie Joe Armstrong

History will tell if we were really a good band or just a one day fly. — Billie Joe Armstrong

What I see in a lot of music movies, or rock ‘n’ roll movies, that feature a band is that they’re lip–synching. — Billie Joe Armstrong

The thing about punk is that there are purists. Once you start going outside of that, they don’t think what you’re doing is punk rock. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I think we have the worst name in rock, I really do. It’s the worst name in the world — Billie Joe Armstrong

My job description is that I’m a rock star. And I’m good at it. — Billie Joe Armstrong

A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It’s below the radar. The beauty of it is that you’re not supposed to always know. It’s subterranean. — Billie Joe Armstrong

That’s the gamble that you make when you decide to become a rock musician. It’s totally unpredictable. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I’m a dirt bag rock and roller. I want to represent that before anything else — Billie Joe Armstrong

You can’t live on planet rock star 24/7; you have to be down and dirty and have some fun. — Billie Joe Armstrong

For some young people, their first experience ever hearing punk rock music was playing the Green Bay Packers on ‘Madden’. — Billie Joe Armstrong

Punk rock isn’t supposed to be for everyone. There is that sort of private club mentality, which is necessary. It keeps things from getting watered down and boring. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I’ve been playing rock and roll since I was 16 years old, and now I have a 16–year–old. — Billie Joe Armstrong

To me, it doesn’t feel like it’s just another rock record that somebody put out. It feels like we taped into the culture a little bit — Billie Joe Armstrong

It would be great to do a rock opera, but using more low–fi technology. I love shitty–sounding records. — Billie Joe Armstrong

One thing I can’t do is do anything half–assed. I want to make sure everything is right, that the song is fully realized. — Billie Joe Armstrong

I wrote a song called ‘Green Day’ because I was smoking a lot of dope. — Billie Joe Armstrong

Just seeing the things on TV and the things in front of you, the amount of information coming in, and the lack of information not coming in, how could you not help but write songs about it. — Billie Joe Armstrong

When we were making the record, I just decided, at the last second. I thought, ‘This song [‘Ordinary World’] makes a lot of sense, being on the album [Revolution Radio]. — Billie Joe Armstrong