Top 120 Kathleen Hanna Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I really love that I’m giving myself the opportunity finally to not have the pressure of every single song you do having to be “political” or whatever. I’m just making what I wanna make.”

— Kathleen Hanna

52. “It takes falling down a bunch of times before you start running.”

— Kathleen Hanna

53. “I wouldn’t want to play Miss Hannigan. I’m not a villain. She’s mean to little children! I can’t do that. That would disrupt my brand.”

— Kathleen Hanna

54. “Just because you’re wearing a goofy hat doesn’t make it performance art.”

— Kathleen Hanna

55. “I think that it’s so powerful for me to go see someone like Bridget Everett at Joe’s Pub and watch her weave her songs in and out of these funny, tragic stories – you can talk and sing and it’s not this horrible offense, you’re going to get thrown in artistic jail.”

— Kathleen Hanna

56. “I like loud snare, and I like really treble-y guitars, and that’s just never going to change.”

— Kathleen Hanna

57. “The exciting thing about getting a label together and doing press for it is that hopefully some 15-year-old girl who is the only feminist in her junior-high class will hear about it and be like, “Oh, cool, I hadn’t heard of that, I’m going to check it out.””

— Kathleen Hanna

58. “Young girls getting into feminism.”

— Kathleen Hanna

59. “It’s so crazy because kids that wrote to me when they were 14 years old are still in my life. A lot have gone on to become musicians and artists in their own right who inspire me now.”

— Kathleen Hanna

60. “Well, part of the thing is, like, what’s the difference between censorship and social responsibility? I sometimes find that the whole censorship argument is used as a way for people to avoid the fact that they’re like...”

— Kathleen Hanna

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

— Kathleen Hanna

62. “I get emails every day from people saying, “I never heard your music. I don’t know anything about you. I just happened to watch this on Netflix. I hope you’re feeling better. More power to you.” It just shows you, I don’t know, how generous and wonderful people can be.”

— Kathleen Hanna

63. “It was one of the first things I did on my own; I worked at McDonald’s, raised the money and did it. I’m really, really passionate about pro-choice, because I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now if I’d had a kid at 15.”

— Kathleen Hanna

64. “I didn’t go to high school, I didn’t go to college, I didn’t have women’s studies. All of my feminist ideals and education have been built around art and my friends and community. And so it’s still growing.”

— Kathleen Hanna

65. “Find something that makes you happy, like looking at beautiful pictures, or, if you’re able, listening to beautiful music, or sitting by the window and looking outside – small things like that can be absolutely huge.”

— Kathleen Hanna

66. “From puberty on, I felt like me and my friends were always running. From abusive dads, men on the streets, abusive boyfriends, or even from mean things men would say to us that got stuck in our heads. But running meant we thought we were worth saving for the right one.”

— Kathleen Hanna

67. “It’s so important for people in political groups to learn the difference between productive criticism and not. When it’s about something you can change, it’s productive. But if it’s just like “You are an evil person”, you can’t change that. There’s no way around that.”

— Kathleen Hanna

68. “It takes your mind off things when there’s a cat in your lip and he’s purring while you’re petting him.”

— Kathleen Hanna

69. “My mom wasn’t, like, she was reading all these historical romance novels the majority of the time. She read a feminist book and then my dad would sit down and explain it to her like she was an idiot.”

— Kathleen Hanna

70. “Since I loved underground music, I tried to carve a space for feminism within it. Those were my hopes.”

— Kathleen Hanna

71. “I can’t constantly be trying to write the unwritten song, the song that the 15-year-old girl needs. I need to write the song that I need.”

— Kathleen Hanna

72. “I think music can definitely be art; I also think music can be crap and not be art.”

— Kathleen Hanna

73. “I watch videos on YouTube of bands that I’ve heard of that I want to check out. And sometimes I don’t even finish the video. And that’s really sad, because maybe I’d like that song. I think that we don’t give stuff a chance to really sink in.”

— Kathleen Hanna

74. “I’m sure if you see things you wrote when you were 19, you cringe. I saw stuff like angry poetry that I wrote when I was mad at my father, or photos I took where I smeared period blood on myself. It’s embarrassing.”

— Kathleen Hanna

75. “I’m in a really lucky position where people will be interested in whatever I do, but what I do is sing.”

— Kathleen Hanna

76. “I know that’s really horrible, but that’s how I do it in my head. I’m going to die. It doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. I’m a grain of sand. As a grain of sand, I may as well go out and relate to people and enjoy my short time on this planet that I have. Who knows what’s coming next?”

— Kathleen Hanna

77. “I think that feminism is in cycle. Feminism rotates between backlash and interest.”

— Kathleen Hanna

78. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that things are a lot more permeable. It’s not so black and white: not every journalist is a jerk.”

— Kathleen Hanna

79. “Sometimes, being a feminist artist, there are times where I’m in a position where I just want to feel like I’m saying all the right things politically, or I feel like I have to mention my own project over other people’s projects.”

— Kathleen Hanna

80. “Every time I get sexually harassed, I’m supposed to turn around and yell at the person, but there are safety issues. Sometimes the best thing you can do it just walk right past that person and have a great day. But sometimes you feel like you really need to say something.”

— Kathleen Hanna

81. “When you’re a musician and you go out onstage, and you’re someone who loves attention, you are going to become a role model to some extent.”

— Kathleen Hanna

82. “I felt like going out on the road and mixing it with music – which is something young people are always really interested in – would be a good way to proselytize. It was like feminist evangelism.”

— Kathleen Hanna

83. “I kind of decided that doing music is enough because I’m already running a couple small businesses. I’m a part of Bikini Kill Records, Le Tigre Records, and Digitally Ruined Records. In dealing with my health and everything, my ability to do that? I wouldn’t be good at it.”

— Kathleen Hanna

84. “I am such a bossy producer and such a control freak that there’s a part of me that really longs to be bossed around.”

— Kathleen Hanna

85. “I feel like what I’m best at is being a musician and a performer. I want to use that to help people who are good at starting nonprofits.”

— Kathleen Hanna

86. “I know what a good question would be for an actor. What’s your least favorite thing that you’ve ever heard an actor say about acting? Or about being in a movie?”

— Kathleen Hanna

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

— Kathleen Hanna

88. “I’m living in a world where there are LGBTQ straight alliances at high schools. I feel pretty psyched on that.”

— Kathleen Hanna

89. “I would love to make a bunch of country demos and write country songs for really great country singers.”

— Kathleen Hanna

90. “I realized that calling yourself a feminist or not calling yourself a feminist, just by being in a band of all girls, it’s all you talk about.”

— Kathleen Hanna

91. “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.”

— Kathleen Hanna

92. “If I had to choose between the band or the friendships, I’d choose the friendships at this point.”

— Kathleen Hanna

93. “I think as a culture, we don’t like conflict or looking at icky stuff – especially in our downtime.”

— Kathleen Hanna

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

— Kathleen Hanna

95. “I am possibly thinking about doing an Internet show in the future that will highlight political organizations that I seek out to let people know about them, volunteer opportunities, and donation opportunities.”

— Kathleen Hanna

96. “A lot of artists are just really stupid about money, and it’s really hard to find somebody who kind of thinks of shuffling money around and doing business as an art.”

— Kathleen Hanna

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

— Kathleen Hanna

98. “I never thought that someone would be teaching one of my fanzines. I never thought I’d be off to lecture at a college. It’s still shocking to me.”

— Kathleen Hanna

99. “I just write what I want to write.”

— Kathleen Hanna

100. “If people are like, ‘Oh, you’re an icon,’ then whatever. But who thinks of themselves like that? It’s not like I have posters of myself on the wall.”

— Kathleen Hanna