Shirley Manson Quotes

I am laughably aggressive, and the rest of the band is very laid back, so we mix well.

I was always embarrassed because my dad wore a suit and my mother wore flat pumps and a cozy jumper while my friends' parents were punks or hippies.

A lot of celebrities just want money, fame, power, fancy cars, houses all over the world and have people BOW DOWN to them. To me, that's frightful behaviour.

Mozart was a punk, which people seem to forget. He was a naughty, naughty boy.

People don't associate red hair, pale skin, and freckles with beauty.

I want to hear an alternative viewpoint, and I don't want girls to be defanged and declawed and pretty and mute.

No, I like being a role model because I know how much comfort my musical idols brought me.

I have women who offer to sleep with me all the time. But not men. They're all talk and nay action - as we'd say in Scotland.

I think it's a great thing to have failed in life and then pulled yourself up by the boot straps and actually done something, because then you appreciate it more.

It's unhealthy for people to never express any kind of negativity or doubt. To have balance, you need to address that side of your thoughts as well as the positive. Otherwise, you tend toward crazy.

I say embrace the total geek in yourself and just enjoy it. Life is too short to be cool.

What makes a woman stylish is what she has to say and how she chooses to live her life.

We're living in a time when people are struggling to appear perfect.

A lot of people these days are not music lovers - they just want to be famous which is a very different thing to what I grew up believing in.

I couldn't feel good about myself hanging out in Armani clothes when my girlfriend can't even pay her heating bill. I'd feel foul and I'd be embarrassed.

It's definitely an intrinsic part of my makeup that makes me want to see black when everyone else is seeing white.

One day I realized that it didn't matter whether people loved me or not.

I am a contradictory mess but I see it as my prerogative to change my mood like the weather.

I have a lot of very close girlfriends and sisters - I'm from an all female family. My father often quips that even the cat was neutered!

Possibly because I grew up not feeling very confident about my own physical appearance, I developed internal devices so that I could integrate into society.

You have to watch all sides of your advancement, you have to make sure people's bodies and minds are healthy and their morale is cool before you can really go out and play great music.

I've got a lot of stamina and I enjoy people, so having lots of people around doesn't freak me out.

I've got no timetable. I'm sort of sick of timetables, to be honest.

In terms of fitting in, you know, I don't have a lot of armor up. I'm a raw nerve and it's really uncomfortable for a lot of people.

I think women in pop have been declawed and defanged, and they're just meant to look pretty and sing pretty.

I mean, I tend to do my own thing, and that usually crosses purposes with everyone around me.

I have a temper on me that could hold back tides.

I would say I'm pretty well at ease with my sexuality, but I'm an individual before I am a female.

If you have any opinions at all or if you're even remotely verbal then they're going to call you fiery.

I just want to live my life a little freely and not adhere to any schedule - just make music and have fun.

The truth is, I've always been wracked with self-loathing and terrible, paralysing depression.

At the end of the day, though, the band members have to be strong. It's down to the individuals in the unit. Listen to me, I'm talking like I'm in the army and this is my squadron.

We should never listen to our feelings. They lead us astray.

A lot of my friends are artists or musicians or single parent families and I'm totally aware of how difficult it is for them to make ends meet.

I like the feeling that I'm giving young women self-confidence. It sounds so cliched, but it can be very moving.

I'm afraid of happy people. They're chemically unbalanced.

It's really difficult to navigate attention and stardom and celebrity status and still try to maintain yourself and hold onto your intelligence and integrity. It's really challenging.

My solo album is dead and buried. We had the funeral. It was sad and I cried a lot but it made such a beautiful corpse that we had an open casket.

I refuse to step inside the ring and fight like a gladiator against my own. I'm not playing that game. Any woman who has survived a year or more of making music has my undying respect.

I feel privileged, to be honest.

I want to hear from the creature who isn't blessed with unbelievable good looks and incredible genes. I want to hear from the geek girl, the forgotten girl, the invisible girl and the miserable girl.

I think young artists are always inspiring because they are coming at worlds from a different point of view.

I wanted to put out a solo record because I was stuck on a major label and sick of it.

Starbucks is my main fix and it's usually you people working in there - sometimes they're actually shaking. It just makes me feel horrendous because I've been in that situation.

Everybody's trying to be the biggest, because if you're not the biggest, you don't survive.

Pop music seems to be the way radio programming has chosen to support female artists. They have chosen not to support a more provocative voice from women, which I find disappointing.

Somehow or another, my mother taught me to push through my fear, always. Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Obviously, from the experience you get from making videos, you understand where the camera is and how some of the actual technicalities work and so on and so forth.

You don't really hear a female perspective on the radio, because so many of the songs are being written by men.

When somebody asks me a question, I try to be as straightforward about it as possible. I try not to overthink what I'm going to say in an interview.