On Life & Growing Up

“Britney Spears makes it cool for hot girls to marry double-divorcé dads of two like me.”

“You know what the best thing about San Francisco is? You can see Oakland from it.”

“Oakland is like the Detroit of San Francisco.”

“At one point, we were in Europe and we slept in this gal’s house. And upstairs, in a room, everyone’s piled in there, it was a small room and we were literally piled almost two high across the entire room. And her brother had shot himself in there. He was playing around, playing Russian roulette, joking around. And it was like, 'Go upstairs and sleep, just stay off the carpet.'”

“We have a completely mixed audience, all age groups, from teenagers to 60-year-olds. ”

“The sheer volume of 'blah blah' takes the wind out of the sails of real anger. It just gets lost when everyone says, 'I'm so angry!' Why are you angry because you were overlooked in the queue at McDonalds?!”

“Performers and artists kind of have a hole within themselves that they're constantly seeking to fill. They have a void in their lives. Of course, we all fill it with music. But for some people music isn't enough, or they don't think it's enough. And so they spiral downward. And sometimes they spiral all the way down.”

“It seemed like when the Starman left this Earth, all the mad men came in and started to destroy everything.”

“Anything that has to do with competition, I think, 'Oh, we're just gonna lose.'”

“We're best friends, basically brothers. Mike's children have always called me Uncle Billie.”

“If I were to die now, I want my wife and sons to be proud of me. That’s what my dad did. He was a hard worker. He enjoyed life and did his best to make the bad parts good.”

“Everyone has their opinions. If people want to talk shit about us, that’s fine. But I don’t think I ever sold my soul.”

“If you think too much about rock ’n’ roll, you end up with a big head and a lot of self-consciousness.”

“I played jazz for a while before joining Green Day. In the jazz band, I was constantly told to ‘play quieter,’ but then I was being told to ‘play harder and six times louder!’ Also, in jazz, you’re told to ‘play more,’ but in rock, you’re told to ‘play one beat at a time,’ which is the complete opposite of how I play, so it took me a while to get used to it. But I kept playing and I made it.”

“Even if your life is shit and people are telling you what you can and can’t do, you can still come to our show, let your hair down and have fun.”

“If any one of us said we didn’t want to do this anymore, it would be the end of Green Day. Working with each other is just too natural for us. If that changed… it’d all be over.”

“There's a police station on 12th Street in Oakland. After I got charged with a DUI, I had to do a whole bunch of paperwork there to satisfy my community service requirement.”

“In the old days, the zoot-suit guys used to jingle their change, and this was their spot. Jingletown has been held down by Latino families for 50 years. And then there's us.”

“I'm old now. I can only do fuck time once.”

“Billie says that this is our high school band, which it is. But what I take from it too is that our fans have grown up listening to us just the same as we’ve grown up. People say, ‘I grew up listening to your band,’ and I’m like, ‘So did I!’”

“Someone said to me the other day, ‘Your band is my childhood.’ And I said, ‘It’s my childhood, too!’”

“The Beatles have always been a prominent influence for us. They lived the dream that we later lived, they paved the way for us. I love all these British rockers anyway, The Who, The Animals, The Kinks, I'm also really into glam rock. The Sweet are just awesome and I could listen to David Bowie all day”

“I like being a normal person. I like being someone that just lives in a community and has good friends and strong relationships that are based on the same life experience that we’re all going through. Then I'll play a gig in front of a hundred thousand people and I go, 'Holy shit!' That doesn’t get old.”

“I do pray. I try and think of something out there that is a higher power, just to make sure I’m keeping my ego in check.”

“I’m one of six kids. I'm the youngest. It was loud. Everybody was funny. Everything seemed pretty much like a normal big family, whatever that means. But then that dynamic really switched when my father passed away when I was ten.”

“One thing that both me and Billie can relate to is what happens if you are brought up in a house full of women. It opens your eyes real quick and shows you a sense of respect for the world.”

“I used to go to clown school. As you can imagine, you learn all kinds of skills there. Unicycling, among other things. During a performance, I fell off the stage on one of those unicycles and landed hard on the saddle. Part of my testicle slipped into my body and was never seen again. Farewell, testicle! Hey, at least it's still there, and the one I still have is really pretty!”

“In the best way, it's humbling to be surrounded by people who know you so well. You have to get used to the fact that you definitely won't be treated like a rock star at home – it's a bit of a blow to your ego at first, but then it's very liberating.”

“LA is really OK for a vacation. There are some really good beaches and you can have a good time. But large parts of it, like Hollywood, they're just not real places. It's more like a run-down Disneyland, only with more silicon. We're Californians, but we prefer Berkeley and Oakland.”

“You can scare yourself with ambition – having the audacity to want to be as good as John Lennon or Paul McCartney or Joe Strummer. There has been so much great shit before me I feel like a student. Who the fuck do I think I am? But you have to battle past that. It's the people who are overconfident who are the ones putting out the biggest piles of shit. If you're at that place where you're working hard but don't feel like you know what you're doing anymore, then you're on to something.”

“I come from the school of Pete Townsend and The Replacements. Although when I was 13 I saw an REM concert which totally inspired me to form a band.”

“I wanted to get out of a shithole town where you had to kill someone or dye your hair blue to be noticed. I wanted to go to other cities, other states, other countries, and take Mike along with me.”

“Being a parent is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my whole life.”

“Life isn’t perfect, it’s better than that. If you can survive through some of this stuff, you find out who you really are. Whether it’s drug addiction, or losing a family member, or dealing with someone who’s got some serious personality issues.”

“I think anybody who says rock ‘n' roll can’t change lives is full of shit. Because it can. It changed mine.”

“Where we come from, people were telling us, don’t change, don’t change, don’t change. Y'know, I’ve been the same guy for so fucking long I don’t need them to tell me anymore. I know who I am.”

“We were playing in Dublin the other night and there were a lot of bras being thrown. I said, 'I’ve never seen so many bras before.' As soon as I said that some guy’s boxer shorts ended up flying right into my hand.”

“I feel most powerful when I’m able to use my words as weapons rather than a Molotov cocktail.”

“I can be Mister Wright or Mister Cool. I’m either the man that your woman’s been looking for her whole life or the guy that you wish you were.”

“Green Day for me has always been those moments of clarity. You can do all the drugs you want and drink all the booze you want, but when a band is at their best it’s when they’re clear-headed.”

“I’ve learned to kind of use anxiety in a positive way. You definitely get a bit whiny, but it’s better than bottling it up. At least now I know I’ll wake up alive.”

“When I asked one teacher to sign my drop-out form, he didn’t even know who I was.”

“I’m not royalty. I’m the king of nothing. I’m in the same high school rock ’n’ roll band I’ve been in since I was 16.”

“Support new bands, they’re the future. They’re the future of punk and rock ‘n' roll. No matter what. You hear people that get jaded and they think things were better back a long time ago, or whatever – not true!”

“We’re currently building a clone army and we’re going to send them off to different continents to play Green Day shows for us. We haven’t quite gotten the Mike down yet. He has very complex DNA.”

“My wife won’t allow Green Day to be played at home.”

“I was a terrible student. I just wasn’t focused. I also had a mullet. The most embarrassing haircut I’ve ever had.”

“The first time I ever wore eyeliner was 1990 ‘cause I thought I looked cool, like Mike Ness from Social Distortion.”

“Billie never drove, ever. Maybe once, for about fifteen minutes or something. He wasn’t good at it. He was only good at whining and pissing in a Gatorade bottle in the back of the van.”

“I ran into Joe Strummer at an airport once. His band was playing in Minnesota and I was pushing a baby carriage. I was there to go visit my family. There he was standing right behind me so I turned around. He talked to my son Joey. He was saying, 'Oh, my name’s Joey too.' That was pretty amazing.”

“I think we’re the first ones to yell at each other, but we’re also the first ones to be there when the other’s life is totally falling apart.”

“People ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ And basically, it’s because I fucking want to.”

“I like to keep my girlish figure.”

“I just got attacked by a pigeon!”

“I am trying to put on guyliner with my feet.”

“I just got to a breaking point where it was like, by my later high school years, 'You’re all full of shit anyway. Everyone’s full of shit. I know what I’m doing, and fuck school, and fuck schoolwork, and I’m not going to go to fucking college anyway, and I’m gonna play in a rock band, and you’re all gonna be sorry.' You get vengeful - it’s a natural instinct, all those hormones going and shit.”

“People who lack self-esteem are often the ones who are the best at making others believe in themselves. You know, as if they somehow put all their energy into making sure that no one ends up like them.”

“My mom’s got a cute ass. Total MILF!”

“I don’t regret anything. Even playing with Bon Jovi was kind of a trip.”

“Somebody impersonated me years ago and went home with some girl and stole all her jewellery and credit cards. The cops were trying to prosecute me for six months!”

“Mike burps the loudest.”

“We’re still the same desensitized kids from the suburbs. I think that’s just the way we’re made. When mom and dad fucked they made these little monsters!”

“Some people call me Billie, some call me Billie Joe – either is fine. But only my father-in-law calls me BJ. And he’s the only one who’s allowed to.”

“I’m all kinds of dad. There’s a side of me that can be pretty conservative - but on the other hands, my sons will bring their friends to shows, and they’ll be like ‘holy shit, look at those tattoos! Your dad is crazy!’”

“Fame is about giving back and doing it for the right reasons, not because you have a guilty conscience.”

“Mike and Tre are my best friends and we always keep it in perspective. Fame is not bigger than the human soul or the human spirit, and it never will be.”

“It’s like that feeling of what’s obsolete, like we’re turning into a pop-culture graveyard… ooh, that was good — pop-culture graveyard! I’m going to say that so many times in the next few days.”

“I would rather sneak into the body of Michelle Obama, thank you very much.”

“Bono sent my wife a dirty e-mail. That was kind of funny…”

“First name Billie! Last name Joe!”

“I’m very monogamous.”

“Every once in a while we’ll be walking through wherever we’re at, Italy or Germany or somewhere, we’ll see a squat and me and Tre’ll stumble in and end up smoking hash with some crusty guys. We can do that because they know we were there before.”

“Everything I do is autobiographical unless I’m writing about a friend or something.”

“I never want to be the kind of guy who talks about addiction. The last thing I want is sympathy from anybody. I don’t want a pity party.”

“My brother and I were taking a bath together - I was about four, so he was about six - and I guess he had a little, um, boner or something. And he took a pee. It shot straight up and went right into my mouth. I drank his piss! I ended up throwing up the dinner we had that night all over the bathtub.”

“I got arrested for stealing a car when I was 16. I ran into a ditch and ended up getting thrown in jail. My uncle had to come and get me out - he was particularly unhappy because it was his car!”

“There was this guy who rammed my head into a cement wall for no reason when I was 17. So yeah, it would be nice to have his legs broken or something.”

“This is way too life changing. Going to bed.”

“I was an eleven-year-old rambunctious kid with ADHD. I thought cymbals were awesome.”

“My wife calls me Eeyore, after the Winnie the Pooh character.”

“I’d just rather write about being sad or angry than being happy. I’d rather write about committing suicide than about a girl.”

“In doing the breakdown section of Holiday, I pounded myself in the chest with this big microphone and I ended up bruising my ribs for like a month and a half.”

“My wife thinks I’m a pain in the ass. She's right. And these are my two other wives.”

“The fucked up thing about being famous and having money is that if you complain about something, people are like ‘what the fuck are you complaining about? You don’t have to work a real job. You don’t have to worry about money or a place to live.’ I feel like I don’t have anyone to vent my frustrations to because they won’t understand.”

“We know that sometimes all we really have is each other. This is the three of us, and this is what you get.”

“We had this engineer, Tone, who was 19. I called these dominatrix ladies in to beat the shit out of him on tape so we could get the sound of it. It was quite entertaining. He thought he was badass so they gave it to him a little heavy.”

“I’ve been a cross between 18 and 40 since I was 10 years old.”

“Tré once convinced me to go into a bathroom with him on acid and I was freaking out because I didn’t know what I was going to do. He pulled out an asthma inhaler and he goes, ‘Here, try this. It’s rad.’”

“I believe in some sort of spirituality, but I don’t know if I’m gonna end up with a hundred virgins somewhere or something! I guess I’d be happy if I just got to see a few old friends on the way.”

“I may have made this grandiose record, but I’ve got to take out the recycling, too.”

“You make excuses. You ra­tionalize. You can take a shit in a mailbox. That doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.”

“We decided we were going to be the biggest, best band in the world or fall flat on our faces.”

“We were out in the mountains. We used to jam with solar panels and a fuckin’ Peavey amp.”

“I like playing big places a lot. We got a chance to be playing these arenas, and I’m really grateful for that. I’m not going to sit here and say ‘fuck our fans, man, they’re not true Green Day fans because they heard us on MTV.’”

“I’m human still. I’m probably angry at least five days out of a week just like anybody is. Everybody gets sick of life. It’s human nature.”

“I still have nightmares about falling behind in my classes. I’ll have these dreams where I’m getting an incomplete in class. When I was going in to drop out of high school, I gave one teacher the dropout slip. He just looked at me and said ‘who are you?’”

“Anything someone said about us – I don’t hold it against them, Maximumrocknroll or anybody. A lot happens in 20 years. They gotta change too. They have to be responsible for the shit they do. All I can do is be responsible for the shit I do, whatever happens. Their opinions… most people don’t even think like that anymore. I can’t hold someone’s 15-year-old self against them forever.”

“Why do I do it? Because it’s art. It’s an art form. It’s just something that I feel I have to do. Something I’ve always wanted to do.”

“Some of the toughest times of our lives were living in squats and being completely unsure about what’s gonna happen next month, let alone next year.”

“I thought a lot of the grunge bands were nothing but arena rock bands. They just hadn’t washed their hair! They were boring and introverted and it really didn’t say anything.”

“A lot of people were like - ‘you saved my life, you saved me from depression, you gave me hope.’ All these things - it sounds cheesy to sit there and say it, but it’s true.”

“The craziest thing love has ever made me do is get married.”

“You’ve written from your heart, you’ve written from your head, you’ve written from your testicles.”

“We’re like the ultimate motorcycle gang – the only way you can leave is if you kill somebody.”

“I never claimed to be the best—I just want to be the catchiest.”

“A lot of bands will say they prefer playing small shows. But let’s be honest, playing stadiums doesn’t suck either.”

“I never thought being obnoxious would make people like me, or inspire them.”

“I just do the best I can with what knowledge and background I have, which can be difficult because I don’t have much of a family background. Well, I do, but a dysfunctional family background. So I’m making this shit up as I go along.”

“I was stoked when Fall Out Boy inducted us into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. I felt they were kindred spirits in the way they created culture around their band to make it fun for the fans.”

“I've been singing harmony with Mike Dirnt since we were about 15 years old.”

“They always give you shit when you try and read those fisting magazines on the plane.”

“Pretty and demented at the same time, like me.”

“Another good pickup line is "hey, how long is your cock?"”

“The harder you work, the luckier you get.”

“I'm always a work in progress.”

“We're Green Day. We can do whatever we want.”

“I love my friends and family, but playing, that's my DNA.”

“Every night I play as if my life depends on it.”

“We still have our anger and shit, but there's a greater good involved here”

“I've matured, maybe, but not grown up.”

“I'm like a sack of potatoes, to be abused at will.”

“My job description is that I'm a rock star. And I'm good at it.”

“Britney [Spears] makes it cool for hot girls to marry double-divorcé dads of two like me”

“Just because you're in the missionary position don't make you no missionary.”

“Sometimes you need coffee, and sometimes you need a Bloody Mary.”

“If you start planning too far ahead, the next thing you know you forget you're living today”

“I got body lice in Germany! I'd tell you they were crabs, but I wasn't getting laid.”

“Our motto is more booze and less guilt”

“The bigger the risks, the better off you are. Otherwise you're just boring.”

“I think we have the worst name in rock, I really do. It's the worst name in the world.”

“The principal called me in and laughed and said "Mike, no one in this school has more detentions than you."”

“I don't care what you do, I don't wanna be a mud hippie like you”

“A turtle does come in it's own bowl”

“There's supposed to be a curfew at this shithole. We don't do fucking curfews. We'll go off when we want.”

“We pride ourselves on trying to put on the best show we can and we're not afraid to say that we happen to be the best live band in the world.”

“The one thing about Billie is he will snap and rip your head off if you point anything out at all other than how beautiful he is and how nice he looks today.”

“We put the fun back into dysfunctional”

“The radio sounds good when we're on it!”

“Rock bands are such pussies, you know? I honestly think that people are looking for something that's more than just a piece of shit”

“It's no use analyzing your life the whole time. Those analyses won’t help you when you’re dead.”

“They always say ain't that a bitch. That's why they call them the obitchuaries.”

“I'm gonna be cremated. I don't want to be stuck in any box. Maybe they'll bury me upside down and plant a seed in my ass.”

“I have a daughter and she's the greatest thing that ever happened to me. She gives me a good excuse to watch cartoons.”

“I'll remember 1994 as the year that ate shit...”

“You're the fucking leaders, you have the power. Don't let these bastards dictate the rest of the world, or dictate your fucking life!”

“History will tell if we were really a good band or just a one-day fly.”

“One thing I want to teach my son is sensitivity to other people. I want to teach him not to be this macho freak.”

“I never thought that being obnoxious would get me where I am now.”

“A lot of people, when they talk to me, I can't wait for them to shut up. Like, shut up. You're a moron. I have nothing to say, you know?”

“If someone falls down please pick them back up. Just because there's not a fuckin' camera in your face doesn't mean you don't have to look out for each other.”

“B-I-L-L-I-E J-O-E. My real name is Billie Joe. And it's Southern, my mom's from Oklahoma and that's how I got the name.”

“A guy walks up to me and asks 'What's Punk?'. So I kick over a garbage can and say 'That's punk!'. So he kicks over the garbage can and says 'That's Punk?', and I say 'No, that's trendy!'”

“They have bad taste. I am not a good-looking guy.”

“I was pleasantly surprised with emotions, goosebumps, erections, everything.”

“Yeah I've met members of The Who, and "members" of The Who”

“We are not afraid to be entertainers.”

“The day you become old is the day you're not looking for new experiences anymore.”

“To do something that you feel in your heart that's great, you need to make a lot of mistakes. Anything that's successful is a series of mistakes”

“It's not how you pick your nose, it's where you put that booger that counts.”

“Are any of these vegetables magic? I mean, if I rub this bean on my foot will I run faster?”

“What do you mean we walked around in girls clothes? We walked around in dresses and they happened to be ours!”

“No man can eat 50 eggs!”

“Our passion is our strength.”

“Nobody leaves this band unless it's in a coffin”

“New Year's Eve...we don't remember. They said we had fun.”

“It's my fucking life and you know what, nobody invited you...so there's the door...see ya!”

“It's the end of the day, I've got my Chinese chicken salad, Mike's a happy boy.”

“My goal is to be one of the biggest bands in the world, and I have never been bashful about saying that.”

“I heard Davey Havok has a brand of eyeliner out now... it's AFI-liner”

“Everyone is entitled to our opinion”

“Condoms are for sailors.”

“You have to be forgiven of your sins now so you can start sinning all night long”

“Rock star outfits...commence!”

“Y'know?”

“You don't mow another man's lawn!”

“...and sometimes I think she may have married the end of the world.”

“Let's shake some shit up - that's all you can do.”

“Of course, you also want something that'll make one hell of a killer tattoo.”

“It's not about the way you pick your nose, it's where you place the booger that counts.”

“Do you have a problem? I have a gun. I'll shoot you. No problem.”

“School is practice for the future, and practice makes perfect, but nobody's perfect, so why practice?”

“I never jizz in my own socks!”

“Rock 'n' roll can be fun and dangerous at the same time.”

“What has two thumbs, speaks French, and likes blowjobs? *points thumbs at himself* Moi.”

“The radio sounds good when we're on it!”

“The day you become old is the day you're not looking for new experiences anymore.”

“Don't jack off a cactus, you'll only hurt your hand and the cactus' feelings”

“You can't live on planet rock star 24/7; you have to be down and dirty and have some fun.”

“I hate celebrities. I really hate them.”

“There's nothing wrong with being a loser, it just depends on how good you are at it.”

“Yeah fuck me! I wish all of you could fuck me!”

“I wanna survive an avalanche”

“You can't fuck with us now. We did it. We pulled it off.”

“I always said that the world is a better place because of Joey Ramone”

“If my kid didn't rebel, she wouldn't be my kid”

“I'm not gonna say anything inspirational; I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot”

“You think your life is tough? Try being a parent”