Shane MacGowan Quotes

Cram as much pleasure as you can into life, and rail against the pain that you have to suffer as a result.

I drink because I'm thirsty.

I've been a babe magnet for quite a while now.

You can’t hate people unless you love them.

Everyone drinks..........Well, unless they don't.

There is drinking in lots of the songs because there is drinking in life. Drinking stimulates the imagination.

When I'm writing a song, it gives me more actual pleasure to hear someone else sing it than do it meself.

I'm not so much a rock star, d'ya know what I mean? I play Irish music. There's really no age when you stop playing Irish music. Even if I retired from playing onstage, I'd still be singing in pubs.

I don't believe in the Holy Trinity - but I do believe in the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spook is just a friendly way of saying Holy Ghost.

What I do is I'm a bandleader, frontman, entertainer.

I play Irish popular music, yeah? Calling it folk is like putting it in a box. It's a living tradition, you know?

There's an art to playing live. It's a great feeling. It's indescribable. It's what I love. I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it.

My dad has no control over who works with me. Me, me and me alone has to take responsibility for anything.

I'm not going to waste my time trying 'break' America, you know what I mean? Too many people have died trying to break America. America doesn't break unless it wants to.

Petitions are ridiculous.

I hate the bloody highways. I hate hamburgers, I hate Greyhound buses. I'd have liked to have been in America during the Jazz Age, or the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Here a tower shining brightOnce stood gleaming in the nightWhere now There's just the rubble in the holefrom "White City

I'm not singing for the future I'm not dreaming of the past I'm not talking of the fist time I never think about the last