Kathleen Hanna's Quotes

I'm just working and having a good time and seeing what develops, which is so awesome, because you don't know what's going to happen, and I'm letting myself do that a lot more than I ever have.

Certain people are like 'Oh, here come the Feminazis!' You end up acting 10 times nicer than you even need to be, to be the opposite of the stereotype like 'You're the man haters!' We're always bending over backwards being extra nice. And I don't know if being nice is my legacy.

You learn that the only way to get rock-star power as a girl is to be a groupie and bare your breasts and get chosen for the night. We learn that the only way to get anywhere is through men. And it's a lie.

I was in a band in the '90s called Bikini Kill, and we were so freaked out about documentation then, and there was the whole thing, not just about the male gaze, but that people were going to misrepresent you... a kind fear of the mainstream that a lot of us had.

Art revolves around creating something that isn't there.

I felt it was really, really important, not just in the vein of feminist erasure or whatever but also just as an artist that I honored my work.

I just write what I want to write.

I really like to talk about my work in a way that is complicated.

I think as a culture, we don't like conflict or looking at icky stuff - especially in our downtime.

I wanted to make something that I wanted to hear that I wasn't hearing.

I wanted to say to myself as much as anyone else that we made art.

If I had to choose between the band or the friendships, I'd choose the friendships at this point.

It's unexpected for women's issues to be brought up in places other than women's centers on college campuses or crisis places.

People have always had these weird things about how you have to be really good looking to be a singer.

There are so many great artists that are doing interesting things, that I don't want to focus on boring people.

So many women have experienced horrific forms of male violence throughout their lives, and why isn't there a song about how you get depressed because of it?

Women didn't want to be on the stage with other women because they didn't want their bodies to be compared. They didn't want another female act opening for them because of this weird competitive and tokenistic attitude.

You don't have to have magic unicorn powers. You work at it, and you get better. It's like anything: You sit there and do it every day, and eventually you get good at it.