Shirley Manson Quotations

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

Until we command the exact same salary as every male counterpart, I feel a political desire to stand by other women. If we don't stand together, that equality will never be fully realized, and that bothers me.

Humans all want to beat the clock but nobody ever does.

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

I am not a sexy woman, I'm not beautiful, I'm not a sex kitten, I don't flirt with people, yet I've been tagged more of sex symbol than women who truly are and I that's solely because I don't reveal too much: people are curious.

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.

People in day-to-day life tend to skim the surface of things and be polite and careful, and that's not the language I speak. I like talking about feelings, fears and memories, anguish and joy, and I find it in music.

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!

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.

The sensation of never feeling good enough or pretty enough will always be there. It's a constant dialogue, and you just learn to be more powerful than that other voice. When you hear it come up, you shut it down.

And then there's all these other creeps that surround your band and suck off you like leeches and try to manipulate you and your business. You have to watch like a hawk. I'm always ready to fight. I see it very much as a battle.

How you present yourself is nobody's business but your own. The stylists have an opinion. The hair people have an opinion. The fans and the management have opinions. Ultimately, you have to trust that you are the safe-keeper of yourself.

I'm fairly in control and I don't like to flirt particularly. I mean, obviously if I meet someone who I think is hot, of course I'll want to flirt with him, But in general I don't use it in day-to-day life.

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

I was a redhead and a middle child; both can make you feel excluded. It's like fighting to be included, in the swim of things. After a while you start to develop a bit of a victim mentality, which isn't great for a happy life.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

That's a difficult question, because to consider yourself a rebel is sort of ridiculous.

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.

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.

I just am fascinated by other female artists, probably because I feel a kinship with them, no matter who they are and what they do.

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

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.

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.

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.

I'd never imagined myself in a band. So the fact that I've had such a long career without really naturally pursuing it is really astounding. It's taken me a long time to accept what I do for a living and actually feel like I have anything of value to add to the equation.

There's nothing I've done that I feel a lot of regret over because I stuck to my guns, even when it got uncomfortable - and it will get uncomfortable because you're going up against the wall.

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

In the '90s, the radio was still alive with all different kinds of points of view, and I think that's why people are longing for that time. It was the first time that alternative music broke through to the mainstream.

I don't find any kind of tension very productive, I find it destructive, actually.

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

It's everywhere, constant criticism of women's appearance in magazines and online. It's not easy to navigate.

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

I know lots of people who've never been lucky enough to get to this stage in their life. And I'm not gonna hide it for anybody.

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

No, I'm not Shirley the girl, I'm the woman on MTV with the big boots.

I think a lot of people in their lives feel like they don't fit in, even if it looks like they do. People feel like outsiders even if others think we, the lives we live, have everything. If they are popular or they have everything they are supposed to have. Even then, people still don't feel quite included.

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.

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.

I'm a loud person; I love noise and aggression. I crave contact.

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

I feel the same way I did when I was in school. I'm having the same insecurities.

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

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

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 plan on doing as much in my life as I possibly can.

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.

Selling millions of albums is a sign you've infiltrated the culture.

I am greedy, and most importantly, game for what's next.

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.

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.

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

I'm 45 years old. I used to be a club girl, but that's not my world anymore. That doesn't mean I can't make music that excites. I think it's inspiring to see an artist you grew up with take another crack.

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.

We always felt like we've never specifically fitted in with anyone; there's never been a movement surrounding what we're doing.

She seems very benign and wholesome, ... but underneath lurks an incredible toughness and powerful directness.

I don't find any kind of tension very productive, ... I find it destructive, actually. I think this record was made despite the mood in our camp, and that something very productive came out of it, which came as a surprise.

I felt like a prisoner sometimes, being in essentially what is a small town in the middle of farmland,

I think they're a little shocked at first. . . . Then they start laughing or grinning or shaking my hand,

We were very aware we'd made a record that was quite unusual,

We wanted to make a record that sounded like we do live, ... We sort of stripped away a lot of the production of this record and tried to make it bare bones.

We discussed it in an adult fashion over dinner one day and since then a burden has been lifted from everybody and our live shows have been incredible.

We always swore if it wasn't 100 percent fun we'd stop it. So that's what we've decided to do. It was important for us to say 'we're tired, this is becoming hard, we should stop right now,

We're taking a hiatus, ... I don't know if we're calling it a day.

We just wanted to make a record that sounded cool. So we stole from hip-hop, we stole from techno and blues and mashed them all up.

We have discussed this and I don't think anybody is interested in breaking up. We feel that this has been a really great tour, and we feel that we have really muscled through and produced a great record, and we just want to take some time off while things are really good between us.

We have discussed this and I don't think anybody is interested in breaking up.

Being the chaotic bunch we are, we should have put a press release together but we didn't. We were quite taken aback by how big a deal was made of it. But we love each other and we still want to work together. We're just taking a break. We've had a crazy decade.

I've been on the go since January, and I think we all just feel a little burnt out ... We came to the conclusion that we shouldn't carry on without having a break. Any stuff that you read about our future is bogus, because it's completely undetermined as yet.

I've got no timetable. I'm sort of sick of timetables, to be honest. I just want to live my life a little freely and not adhere to any schedule - just make music and have fun.

I don't think I have seen a single green vegetable in three months, so I just need to get my life into some sort of sense of control,

I don't really see where I fit into that group, but I'm very flattered. I think, though, all of us women, regardless of how different we are as artists, come from a similar place in terms of how we view our role as a female musician. All of us are pretty feisty. And I think that that's what people identify with. Because there seem to be so few women right now who are interested in having an opinion. Having something to say. Trying to do things a little differently. Refusing to take our clothes off to further our careers.

I don't think we feel Garbage will ever be completely over. It's part of our lives, we still all get on well and love each other. We're taking a hiatus, I don't know if we're calling it a day. I don't think I'll ever make music with another band.

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

Being a singer, being a performer, you have tricks, somehow, to calm yourself when things feel a little overwhelming. I don't do breathing exercises, per se, but I definitely have to have a sort of internal word with myself before things got completely out of hand and I fainted on the floor.

It is so hard for musicians when they step into acting is they're not coming in as a blank slate, they're coming in with a real set idea of who they are, where they're coming from, what their politics are, what their tastes are.

Here's the tragedy of the modern record business: It's radio. If you're not on radio, nobody really is going to hear you or see you or care about you.

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

I've always been an outsider. I am an outsider in Garbage. I'm the odd one out by default.

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.

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

I'm 41, I'm a woman not a kid. I have no interest in making silly pop music.

I love pop music. Who doesn't?

I feel privileged, to be honest.

If Jennifer Lopez could write songs like Fiona Apple's, she wouldn't have to spend so many hours at the gym.

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 am naive. I make mistakes - But I don't give a rat's arse how I am perceived!

I want to hang out in Edinburgh with my friends and eat fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.