Shirley Manson
What makes a woman stylish is what she has to say and how she chooses to live her life.
I want to hear an alternative viewpoint, and I don't want girls to be defanged and declawed and pretty and mute.
I love pop music. Who doesn't?
The truth is, I've always been wracked with self-loathing and terrible, paralysing depression.
I'm afraid of happy people. They're chemically unbalanced.
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.
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 think young artists are always inspiring because they are coming at worlds from a different point of view.
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.
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 think women in pop have been declawed and defanged, and they're just meant to look pretty and sing pretty. You don't really hear a female perspective on the radio, because so many of the songs are being written by men.
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 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'm a loud person; I love noise and aggression. I crave contact.
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'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.
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.
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 a torturous time when you learn almost everything you really have to know about survival. The important thing to remember when you are living through it, however, is that you have absolutely no idea quite how smart and strong and beautiful the pain will make you. So go forth and suffer...you'll rule the world.Collection: Beautiful
I say embrace the total geek in yourself and just enjoy it. Life is too short to be cool.Collection: Life Is Too Short
I've always been an outsider. I am an outsider in Garbage. I'm the odd one out by default.Collection: Odd One
You know, it doesn’t matter how beautiful you are, if you don’t have anything interesting to say, then you’re still boring.Collection: Beautiful
Here am I. I'm 38. My career's probably never been better. And I've made a decision which may or may not impact on it - I refuse to hide my experience and my age, as if it's something I should be ashamed of. I'm alive. 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.Collection: Impact
One day I realized that it didn't matter whether people loved me or not.Collection: People
Dear Kanye West. It is YOU who is so busy disrespecting artistry. You disrespect your own remarkable talents and more importantly you disrespect the talent, hard work and tenacity of all artists when you go so rudely and savagely after such an accomplished and humble artist like BECK.Collection: Hard Work
If Jennifer Lopez could write songs like Fiona Apple's, she wouldn't have to spend so many hours at the gym.Collection: Song
I get female groupies, but I don't get male groupies. 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. If I go anywhere near most of our male following, they are freaked. Absolutely freaked. I think my height has got a lot to do with it. I'm really tall. I'm five-eight, and with heels, I'm six foot, so people are like. 'Whoa, Amazon!' People are a wee taken aback by that 'cause I think people expect me to be small.Collection: Taken
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.Collection: Artist
I had taken some of my solo music into the record label. They didn't really care for the direction I was moving in and I found it really disheartening. They wanted a pop hit, which I understand in terms of making money. I get that. But what they were going to ask of me was something I wasn't prepared to deliver and I felt kind of trapped. I just stopped writing. I just stopped. It was stifling.Collection: Moving
Being a musician makes you very - musicians in general tend to be quite sensitive, I think, to the environment around them, which helps when you are trying to interact with others on screen, to be aware, to be sensitive, and to try to understand what's going on in the scene.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Sleep
I think it's about time the world embraced its geekiness and stopped trying to be cool. It's just...you have way more fun as a geek than as a cool person.Collection: Fun
I wouldn't say that cutting was pleasurable, but there is a sense of euphoria that follows cutting yourself. The quick pinch of pain and the sight of blood snaps you back to the surface and you start to appreciate being alive.Collection: Pain
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.Collection: Exercise
I want to hang out in Edinburgh with my friends and eat fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.Collection: Edinburgh
Even to survive and have everyone in good health now is really precious. Bands half our age don't even get that lucky sometimes. It's good to practice gratitude, as they say. I used to be so ungracious, I wasn't even aware that I should be feeling grateful! Now I actually try and put it into my daily thought: Be grateful. It's not always so easy.Collection: Gratitude
We should never listen to our feelings. They lead us astray.Collection: Feelings
Somehow or another, my mother taught me to push through my fear, always. Feel the fear and do it anyway.Collection: Mother
I am naive. I make mistakes - But I don't give a rat's arse how I am perceived!Collection: Mistake
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.Collection: Tragedy
I'm 41, I'm a woman, not a kid. I have no interest in making silly pop music.Collection: Silly
Ps. I am pretty certain Beyonce doesn't need you fighting any battles on her account. Seems like she's got everything covered perfectly well on her own.Collection: Fighting
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.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Cameras
Everybody's trying to be the biggest, because if you're not the biggest, you don't survive.Collection: Trying