Shirley Manson Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

I say embrace the total geek in yourself and just enjoy it. Life is too short to be cool.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I would say I'm pretty well at ease with my sexuality, but I'm an individual before I am a female.

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.

I wanted to put out a solo record because I was stuck on a major label and sick of it.

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

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.

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

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.

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