Marianne Faithfull Quotes

I am not frightened of much, but I wouldn't like to get ill.

All I can say is I've been lucky with my body. Well done, little body. I praise it and say, 'You're very good.'

To be diagnosed with cancer was a frightening thing, and my first reaction was sheer panic, but I was really fortunate that the cancer was caught at such an early stage that I didn't need chemo or radiotherapy. But I know that cancer is a chronic condition, and once you've had it, you're on the list, because it can come back.

I'm sick of being self-referential. I don't want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.

When you lose your reputation at 19, you lose everything.

I'm interested in time, fame, death, beauty, truth, all those things.

I never trusted anybody at all. I don't know why it was so hard, I just didn't.

For some people, marriage may be very groovy. For me, it really isn't. I don't think it really is for most people anyway. Most people are not very happy.

I was anorexic in the 60s and 70s, although it wasn't called anorexia then. I thought people would be nicer to me if I looked very small and delicate, so food wasn't high on my agenda. But it is now.

I'm a tame actress. I get tired now that I'm entertaining day and night professionally. I think the only reason for going to a party is to pick up a good lay. When you've got a permanent boyfriend it's rather spoilt. Because the fun of a party is to flirt with everyone. I like flirting.

I do have a strong sense of God. It's impossible to explain what I mean when I say that, of course.

The first opera I went to see was Maria Callas singing 'Tosca'.

I'd really like people to see me as a real actress, which I am, but they don't. It's hard to get them to see me as a musician, they just see me as a hanger-on to the Stones, which is not what I am at all. It's a good idea, and if something like that would turn up I could do a whole television show. I've thought about playing a landlady, sort of a mad '60s lady, this absolutely insane character. I would love it. It's a great idea.

I think drugs were used by me as a way of suppressing my natural spirit.

I do sometimes think I could have done without the drugs actually; that was a waste of time, and a huge risk. But then again, there's nothing I can change, so in a way regret is pointless.

The food that's never let me down in life is porridge, especially with milk and maple syrup, which is delicious. Paris isn't a porridge place, but I can buy it in London when I'm there and bring it back with me.

I'm glad to say my father never felt ashamed of me, but my mother probably did.

Rebellion is the only thing that keeps you alive!

Bad behaviour makes men more glamorous. Women get destroyed, thrown out of society and locked up in institutions.

I have always been attracted to the bleaker aspects of life. I love drama.

I have to watch out for being lazy.

I got my interest in Lotte Lenya and the Brecht-Weill canon from my parents. And I love classical music - I got that from my parents. I love Cole Porter - that I got from my dad.

The equipment you've got really dictates what you're going to do. When I started touring, there were no monitors, so I had to take the sound from the hall, and of course it was on a delay, so I would sing, and then I would hear it back, but later. It was very weird.

I do take care of myself; I get my nails done, and I have a skin doctor, but that's it. I'm clean and groomed.

When you split from someone, it doesn't have to mean that you don't love them anymore, you realize that the period of that particular romance is over. One always has to get out before one gets kicked out.

I get all dressed up with that Marianne Faithfull face, and the next thing I know, I'm blurting out things that I shouldn't, trying to get attention when, really, I've got everybody's attention already.

I went to the big Picasso retrospective at the Tate in the sixties, and I think I went to an Andy Warhol retrospective at the Tate in the sixties, too. My mother was very good at taking me to things like that. We lived in Reading, but we went on these cultural trips to London.

I haven't got purity, and I don't think I ever did. I have always been, even as a child, a very decadent little person.

I've got a lot of little compulsive problems, and I've thought about it a lot. And one of the things I ask myself is, 'What are the things I can do that won't hurt me and will help me?' The first answer is work.

Sometimes you just have to get a shock to grow up and wake up, and I've had lots of shocks because it's as though I don't learn the lessons, so something new comes and hits me.

Feminism is the best thing to come out of the '60's.

I focus on the individual and not seeing this great big monster, "the press."

I've learnt to accept what has happened to my voice, I suppose, but I do wish it didn't sound quite so rough.

I come from a very left wing Socialist family, anti-war and anti-empire.

Of course I have regrets; I'm not stupid.

I thought I wanted to go to drama school or university, and that would have been a completely different life. But what got me was the sound, and hearing it. Hearing everything so loud, I loved that back in the studio. I loved that from the very beginning.

The voice of God, if you must know, is Aretha Franklin's.

I'm having a great life, and I want to go on having one.

I've simplified much more in my writing. I say what I've got to say, not in metaphor.

I like my work, but my life always comes first. I always wanted to have a beautiful life, and the way to do it is in show business.

I've done everything I want to do and gone everywhere I want to go.

Life has changed. People have changed. They are more forgiving, less inclined to rush to judgment. And I have changed.