Laura Jane Grace Quotes

"Hormone replacement therapy does not change or affect your voice. And I have no problem with my voice: I really like my singing voice, I don't feel any dysphoria with my talking voice."

"As a trans person, I don't feel welcome in most public spaces. Especially now with Trump, I don't feel faith or recognize that we're protected by the government or administration."

"To me, the songs that I'm most thankful to have been a part of creating are the songs that are able to adapt and change over the years and that mean different things to you at different periods of time in your life."

"I'm just me and if me being honest about who I am and putting myself out there in that way makes connections with people and helps people out, that's just repaying the favor of music because that's what music does for me."

"A lot of what keeps me going is wanting to be better, thinking I'm not good enough."

"I moved to Naples, Florida, and by 15 I was into punk: Green Day, Rancid, NOFX, Operation Ivy. Along with the classic punk bands, like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat - all those bands that you get into when you're first getting into punk."

"Fred Durst gave my first wife a tattoo of a star on the bottom of her foot when she was 14 years old in his trailer home. So that was my first introduction to Limp Bizkit."

"I turned to punk because I didn't fit in anywhere else."

"Every musician out there wants to be judged on the merit of their songwriting, the merit of their performing abilities."

"I don't want to be just that transgender performer or that transgender musical artist. I want to create songs and art and have those be judged on their merit alone."

"I never get to forget who I am, my gender identity."

"I feel self-conscious for even having met so many other band people and artists, I don't want to be that artist that is only able to talk about themselves and their own band. I don't want to be that person. I'd rather just be quiet than be that person."

"I had gone from being married with a kid, two cars, garage, nice house in a nice neighborhood to all of it gone."

"Eating's really important before getting tattooed. You need energy."

"Trying to cause chaos - I think that's the way I create change."

"Writing your memoir is inherently narcissistic."

"I felt more and more like I was putting on an act - like I was being shoved into this role of 'angry white man in a punk band.'"

"I look like a dude and feel like a dude, and it sucks. But eventually I'll flip, and I'll present as female."

"Growing up, my experience with transsexualism was nothing but shame. It was something very hidden, and dealt with very privately."

"I've never had trouble talking and expressing my feelings."

"I'd never have imagined it when I was younger. A trans woman on the cover of 'Time?' That is unfathomable to the 15-year-old me."

"I like the idea that the body is a vessel, that it's not necessarily representative of the real you that's inside of it."

"As technology and science advances, I think the ability to alter yourself should be embraced."

"A lot of people don't perceive me as female or trans, they just see some rocker."

"I don't feel like I've ever been in mainstream society."

"I remember being really young - being 13 or 14 - when I first was really excited about punk rock as an idea, and I was like, 'Don't ever not be punk. Don't ever not be punk.' Telling that to myself, I guess it was like self-defense against the scary world around me."

"I fear cops and have never felt the protection of them."

"My first record I ever got was 'Full Moon Fever.' My dad gave me a copy when I was maybe nine years old or something. And I listened to the heck out of that record. I loved that record."

"Chicago prides itself on being a mean city."

"I grew up in Italy, so for me, Naples pizza is the only type of pizza that there really is."