I usually write at my kitchen table, nothing exotic. I don't need any equipment. I don't have to organise anyone else to rehearse, and when I do a reading, lots of women and girls come, whereas gigs are dominated by men. Not against men, but I want to communicate to women.

Viv Albertine

Women Men Write

I'm still angry at so much - class, gender, society, the way we are constantly mentally coerced into behaving a certain way without us even knowing it. I feel so oppressed by the weight of it all that I just want to blow a hole in it all.

Viv Albertine

Society Men Without

It's me who fixes the roof, unblocks the drain, and changes the plug. I'm Spartacus.

Viv Albertine

Change Art Who

If I didn't live in London, I would live in Glasgow. I love the colour of the brick and the black ironwork. I think it's got such atmosphere and is extraordinary. I met great people there.

Viv Albertine

Work Love Great

The truth is the only thing that will move society forwards.

Viv Albertine

War Truth Society

It's the people who transcend their backgrounds who are interesting to me. I have got a bit of inverted snobbery.

Viv Albertine

Who UN Transcend

In the 1970s, girls didn't do anything. It wasn't their fault. For me and the other working-class girls I hung around with, our route was plotted - you were a secretary and a wife. I wanted to hitchhike around the world, go on motorbikes, be in bands.

Viv Albertine

Work You World

I copied John Lennon; I copied a bit of David Bowie. It's such a shame, and I'm so glad that now young girls have so many different role models in all different walks of life.

Viv Albertine

Life Young Girls Young

Punk inspired me.

Viv Albertine

UN Red Punk

I always felt very free about experimenting with clothes. I was into clothes in a big way from a young age. Not expensive but fun and experimental.

Men Age Young

Truth Truth Is T

T Quotes Quote

I still live very much by punk ethics, but in a more grown up way.

Viv Albertine

Way Very Up

I have a daughter. I have my imagination. I have friends. I, in no way, am going to louse that up with some idiot man, frankly. They drag you down - I'm talking about my generation of men.

Viv Albertine

Men Imagination You

I think I am the Elizabeth Barrett of 2015. Not in terms of genius but in bed a lot.

Viv Albertine

Us Think Thin

I'm the angriest and most empathetic person you'll ever meet.

Viv Albertine

You T Son

I do read a lot of autobiographies and biographies but from people who are not in my field - older women, older artists, Miles Davis.

Viv Albertine

Women Men Art

We grew up during the 'peace and love' of the 1960s, only to discover that there are wars everywhere, and love and romance is a con.

Viv Albertine

War Peace Love

I never thought of myself as a strong person until I wrote my first book, and people started to say, 'You're a survivor. You're such a strong person.' It never ever occurred to me.

Viv Albertine

Art You Wrote

Women are constantly taught to think about what other people are thinking, from those 'Jackie' magazine quizzes - 'What's he thinking?' - to being a grown adult.

Viv Albertine

Women Men Women Are

I was brought up to be uncompromisingly bloody-minded by my mother. She equipped me, without knowing it, to be someone who is creative rather than an entertainer. Not many girls are brought up like that, to never rely on a man. To not be a housewife, not be a mother.

Viv Albertine

Without Wit Wing

It's all very well for the Kinks and Damon Albarn to sing those songs and sneer at Mr. Nine to Five, but again, they're white men, so they didn't have it very hard.

Viv Albertine

Punk was such an exciting time because there were no rules. You could go and knock on Sun Ra's door - and he was in the phonebook, under Ra!

Viv Albertine

We're so tribal in Britain about music. But my music - my guitar playing, the rhythms, et cetera - just express my personality, because I'm self-taught.

Viv Albertine

I absolutely wasn't going to write a book if it was just going to be about punk.

Viv Albertine

It is soul-destroying to have your work and physical appearance picked to pieces.

Viv Albertine

I've had two great loves: my mother and my daughter.

Viv Albertine

I didn't pursue happiness at all. I've never pursued it. I wasn't brought up to pursue it.

Viv Albertine

I get the same lurching thrill now when I'm about to sit down to an egg mayonnaise sandwich and a packet of plain crisps as I used to get when I fancied someone.

Viv Albertine

I've never had any interest in reading the real-life stories of criminals. I don't want to get inside their heads.

Viv Albertine

Both my parents lived through a world war. My grandparents lived through two world wars. And they didn't go around saying, 'Look for happiness.'

Viv Albertine

If my 18-year-old daughter asked me whether she should lead a truth-hunting, artistic, uncompromising life as I have done, I'd say no, don't do it. It's a difficult and lonely path for a woman.

Viv Albertine

We were very deliberately not playing 12-bar structures, blues structures, which rock musicians turned into such a cliche. We tried to... listen to the rhythms within ourselves and take the normal words we used every day in our normal thoughts, which girls hadn't written about before.

Viv Albertine

I've only done a handful of things in my life that have stood out. The rest is just broth: mistakes and boredom.

Viv Albertine

I'm not a gifted storyteller, so I write what I know and hope that honesty resonates with other people's experiences.

Viv Albertine

I read a lot when I was young. All the obvious, all the greats, from 'Le Grand Meaulnes,' 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' 'Fear and Loathing,' 'Catcher in the Rye,' 'The Bell Jar,' 'The Female Eunuch,' 'Valley of the Dolls,' 'The Feminine Mystique,' Tom Wolfe. Then, film took over for me. Film was so exciting in the '70s.

Viv Albertine

I usually write at my kitchen table, nothing exotic. I don't need any equipment. I don't have to organise anyone else to rehearse, and when I do a reading, lots of women and girls come, whereas gigs are dominated by men. Not against men, but I want to communicate to women.

Viv Albertine

I don't believe in an afterlife. You live on in the people you influence during your lifetime.

Viv Albertine

If you've written something that moves you and frightens you, you just can't take it back.

Viv Albertine

I feel sorry for girls getting caught up in it and still thinking they have to define themselves and their success by being in a relationship, straight women, straight girls, by being in a heterosexual relationship or being in any relationship, as if that's in any way a mark of what kind of successful human being you are.

Viv Albertine

People say you mellow as you get older, and I really haven't.

Viv Albertine

There was an angry wave in the '70s, a strong feminist angry wave. I remember thinking - oh my God - I thought it was the beginning of something, and it all went quiet.

Viv Albertine

I hate to say it, but one of the worst things you could be called when I was younger was unfeminine.

Viv Albertine

We used to have massively long discussions about how we should stand on stage. Should we stand with our legs apart? No, all the guys with guitars in skinny jeans stand with their legs apart, and you'd think, 'We can't stand like that.' We'd spend hours and hours, days and days, discussing how to stand.

Viv Albertine

Look at Kate Bush, Patti Smith, Yoko Ono - three really private people, but when they're on stage or when they're singing, they let go like no one else.

Viv Albertine

I think sometimes men find it easier to be a carer than an accessory. I mean, most women I know in bands are pretty lonely. Guys don't want to travel around with you. I know loads of women who do it, but guys don't do it. They're not brought up for it.

Viv Albertine

The more blows you have in life, the better, because it means you're challenging yourself.

Viv Albertine

Doctors didn't know if I would survive. The cancer was too big to operate on, so they blitzed it with chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Viv Albertine

I've had to fight for everything.

Viv Albertine

When you've fought and fought to keep positive and to keep creative even though there was not a space to be creative, well, you show me any human who is not angry after 60 years of that.

Viv Albertine

Female rage is not often acknowledged - never mind written about - so one of the questions I'm asking is, 'Are you allowed to be this angry as you grow older as a woman?' But I'm also trying to trace where my anger came from. Who made me the person that is still so raw and angry? I think that it's empowering to ask that question.

Viv Albertine