Excerpts from Girl in a Band, Kim Gordon

"People pay money to see others believe in themselves." Meaning, the higher the chance you can fall down in public, the more value the culture places on what you do.

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I've always felt there's something genetically instilled and inbred in Californians -- that California is a place of death, a place people are drawn to because they don't realize deep down they're actually afraid of what they want. It's new, and they're escaping their histories while at the same time moving headlong toward their own extinctions. Desire and death are all mixed up with the thrill and the risk of the unknown. It's a variation of what Freud called the "death instinct."

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...I've always believed -- still do -- that the radical is far more interesting when it looks benign and ordinary on the outside.

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The most heightened state of being female is watching people watch you.... Loud dissonance and blurred melody create their own ambiguity -- are we really that violent? -- a context that allows me to be anonymous. For many purposes, being obsessed with boys playing guitars, being as ordinary as possible, being a girl bass player is ideal, because the swirl of Sonic Youth music makes me forget about being a girl. I like being in a weak position and making it strong.
  -- Kim Gordon, Girl in a Band