Annie Lennox People Quotations

I can't understand why the front pages of newspapers can cover bird flu and swine flu and everybody is up in arms about that and we still haven't really woken up to the fact that so many women in sub-Saharan Africa - 60 percent of people in - infected with HIV are women.

Fame for fame's sake is toxic - some people want that, with no boundaries. It's unhealthy.

Charity is a fine thing if it's meeting a gap where needs must be met and there are no other resources. But in the long term we need to support people into helping themselves.

I used to be obsessed about how I presented myself. I didn't want other people dressing me because I didn't want to be treated like a clothes horse.

You wouldn't find a Joni Mitchell on 'X Factor;' that's not the place. 'X Factor' is a specific thing for people that want to go through that process - it's a factory, you know, and it's owned and stitched-up by puppet masters.

Making a Christmas album is looked upon by some people as the thing you do when you are heading towards retirement.

I don't take myself as seriously as some people think, and I'd hate anyone to think I was preaching. That's the last thing I want.

If people like your music, you can't guarantee they're going to love you.

Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing emotion - very powerful emotions. That's what draws millions of people towards it. And, um, I found myself always going for these darker places and - people identify with that.

Churches, depending on their policy, can do fantastic work with people in the community.

I think people in Great Britain are a bit jaded sometimes.

I want people to start thinking about what it means to be HIV-positive and to ask questions about that.

I want people to understand me as a person with views, not just performing songs.

There's a lot of women's organisations, but they're all working separately. If you get people together, as a collaborative voice, it's strong.

There's so much stigma around HIV/AIDS. It's a challenging issue, and the people that already have been tested and know their status find it very, very hard to disclose their status, to live with that virus, and to even seek out the kind of information they need. This experience of going to South Africa a decade ago really woke me up to the scale of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, how it was affecting women and their children. I haven't been able to walk away from it.

Just having medicine isn't equivalent to medical care. You need the health systems, you need to create the social framework so that people feel safe.

I had a number of different labels. A lot of people assumed I was gay because I was wearing a man's suit, and one had to learn that it's OK, people will do that, and you don't always have to explain it one hundred percent, because they're never going to accept what your own interpretation is. It's all illusory.

There was a time when I looked to other people for recognition, because I didn't have enough confidence to trust my own judgment. Now I'm not looking for reassurance, because I realize how fickle people are. My own strength is the best I can have.

We think that this is just our world and we don't know what other people are thinking. Music actually is a phenomenal connector in that respect. It's a special language that defines certain boundaries and connects people in a particular way, a very emotional way, I have found.

There are so many things that we could do to change the world in so many aspects. There are people working in nonprofit organizations, tackling the issues that we so desperately need to face, while governments fail so appallingly.

More than anything, I think everything about appearance is illusory. People see you, and they think they understand what you're projecting, but actually, they have their own interpretation of it, or they put a label on you.

You can live with almost any condition if you're living within a community of people who can share a common understanding.

If you come face to face with some really challenging situations and tragic circumstances - you are going in there with a purpose. You are not going in there as a tourist. You're not going there just to merely observe. You have a purpose, and your purpose is to tell that story, to share that story for the bigger benefit of millions of other people. Your purpose is to create that bridge so you can give that story the dignity and the focus that it deserves, and you can become a part of the amplification that needs to be there.

I stand on the shoulders of giants that have gone before me, in terms of affording people like myself, women, the access to democracy, the vote, medical treatment, education, everything that I've been given. It's all been earned. Therefore I feel it's incumbent on me personally to just contribute something, to add to a collective voice that needs to be here right now, to build it up to a tipping point, to make the world aware that women's rights still have to be addressed and that the word 'feminism' has been devalued and needs to be reclaimed.

People ask me so many questions.

Even in the '80s when people were gay, it was still difficult for them to come out, whereas nowadays, 20 years on, I think, um, we have a far more open-minded society that embraces the notion of homosexuality, and I think there was this doubt about my gender, you know, and at the time it possibly was controversial but... they missed my message, if you see what I mean, because for me it wasn't about a sexual issue, it was more of a feminist thing.