If you lose emotion, and you gain it back, you realise that hate and love are very important to distribute properly. So I'm not going to waste any kind of emotion on things that aren't related to me.

I've always had a desire to be provocative and to make people think, but it wouldn't be any challenge for me just to be shocking. That is where it begins for me, not where it stops. And I could be much more shocking. I think I've adopted a sense of subtlety. I don't sit around wondering how I can make myself even stranger to the world. I've simply evolved into the monster I created, and I'm quite happy with it.

I am a character, so that's the problem. There are many, many levels to how I behave. Some people might associate being Marilyn Manson as having lipstick on, but I don't really have some sort of other lifestyle.

I like to be unhinged; I like to be unpredictable. I like to make people worry that worse things can happen whenever I go out to a restaurant or act in a movie.

I heard this album as finished, I heard it in dreams . . . It was like the revelations of John the Baptist or something.

People hate to describe their music. What we have come to call it is "beat up your mom" music. As far as describing what it sounds like, I guess you'd have to listen.

The idea of Marilyn Manson has been brewing in my head, one form or another, since I was about 12 years old at a Christian high school in Canton, Ohio.