Quotes by Joey Ramone

One day I got a phone call, and Johnny and Dee Dee asked me if I wanted to join their band. I said, 'Yeah.'

Lack of skill dictates economy of style.

Nobody picked up guns in those days. You put on music, and it made you feel great.

The thing about school is that if you're forced into learning stuff, you're not going to be into it.

When I was hitching, I'd be completely decked out. I used to wear this custom-made black jumpsuit, these, like, pink, knee-high platform boots, all kinds of rhinestones, lots of dangling belts and gloves.

I remember being turned on to The Beach Boys, hearing 'Surfin' U.S.A.,' I guess, in 1960. But The Beatles really did it to me.

I'd just sit with Dee Dee on the corner off of Queens Boulevard and drink and insult people and stuff. That's when I got kicked out of my house. My mother told me it was for my own good.

It was the glitter days, and the New York Dolls and Kiss would come play at the Coventry, all those bands would come in from Manhattan.

We decided to start our own group because we were bored with everything we heard... Everything was 10th-generation Led Zeppelin... Overproduced, or just junk. We missed music like it used to be.

There's nobody as good as the Ramones, never will be.

Punk is about being an individual and going against the grain and standing up and saying 'This is who I am.

What they teach you in school doesn't prepare you for life. Textbooks don't compare to living in the real world. Rock and roll teaches you how to live.

Marriage is worse than dying. Why stay with one person for fifty years? We advise against marriage.

Well, weight you can always lose, but hair you can't get back.

I think it's a nice payback. There aren't many people that kind of give back to artists that were their inspiration. Most people think they're ... they're very self bloated.

Hang in there. If you believe what you're doing is unique. Otherwise give up or sound like Nirvana or Pearl Jam.

They asked me to sing -- actually, it was Dee Dee, because he had seen me in Sniper and thought I wasn't like anybody else. Everybody else was doing an Iggy or a Mick Jagger.

Play before you get good, because by the time you get good, you're too old to play.

For me, punk is about real feelings. It's not about, 'Yeah, I am a punk and I'm angry.' That's a lot of crap. It's about loving the things that really matter: passion, heart and soul.

The first record I bought may have been Del Shannon's 'Runaway.'

Forest Hills was a middle-class neighborhood filled with snobby rich people and their screaming brats.

There's nobody as good as the Ramones, never will be. I mean everybody's just emulated us and now everybody just kinda takes our sound as their foundations.

I mean, like, rock n' roll was always about spirit and fun.

When a band like Blondie re-forms, you wish them the best.

To me, John Lennon and Elvis Presley were punks, because they made music that evoked those emotions in people.

The Eagles and the Captain and Tennille ruled the airwaves, and we were the answer to it.

Everybody's just emulated us and now everybody just kinda takes our sound as their foundations.

We always stayed true to what the Ramones are.

Well, I think we're the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world.

For better or worse, MTV sort of bridges the whole country together almost like the BBC does in England. It's opened up everything so wide that it's possible for everyone to have different ideas.

All punk is is attitude. That's what makes it. The attitude.

Rock n' roll is very special to me. It's my lifeblood.

To me, punk is about being an individual and going against the grain and standing up and saying 'This is who I am'.

The Ramones own the fountain of youth. Experiencing us is like having the fountain of youth.

When I was a kid growing up in the '60s, music was an outlet for enlightenment, frustration, rebellion. It was more about individualism. Today it's just like a big business.

I enjoyed my life when I had nothing... and kinda like the idea of just being happy with me.