Layne Staley Quotes

Just because I look sexy on the cover of Rolling Stone doesn't mean I'm naughty.

I see myself on the cover of a magazine and I don't think that it looks like me at all. My first-ever photo shoot was for the cover of a lads' magazine.

I don't think I'm portrayed in the media the way I really am - but then who is?

People that really know me will tell you that I am not a video vixen.

People often expect me to be very serious, but it's not like my record company told me not to smile in photographs, because I was like that anyway.

I don't think I even have a clear perspective of how I'm depicted in the media.

I think a lot of times, when people who get a chance to meet me and be around me, they understand that I'm not the person that the media make me out to be.

My whole life, I've been judged for how I look, which is part and parcel of being in the public eye, playing sexy roles and posing for lad's mags, but I want people to like me for my personality and brain.

I think what happens is, people do just want to see you as a glamour doll that's put up on screen, but I guess it's how you see yourself.

The public me, the one named Elizabeth Taylor, has become a lot of hokum and fabrication - a bunch of drivel - and I find her slightly revolting.

I look in the mirror and I don't see a sex symbol. I just see a guy who looks like he's been beaten with a baseball bat. I mean, is this the face of a sex symbol? They say that because I work in the movies.

Nobody who knows me has ever thought I was a racist, bigot, all of this stuff. All of a sudden I'm on the radio and I become one, if you listen to liberal critics. I'm a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe. I'm a hater and all of this stuff. I'm none of those things and never have been. It's all because of my political views.

I get nervous when I do print interviews because I know that whatever I say is going to be shown through the lens of whomever I'm talking to. So I've read a lot of different versions of myself - and all of them are true because it's all opinion and they're as accurate as it can ever be. But I don't think that I've been deft at hiding parts of my personality.

When people call me illegal, calling me illegal says more about you than it does about me.

A lot of people describe me as chubby, which seems so easy, so first-choice. Or stocky. Fair-skinned. Tow-headed. There are so many other choices. How about dense? I mean, I'm a thick kind of guy. But I'm never described in attractive ways. I'm waiting for somebody to say I'm at least cute. But nobody has.

I couldn't imagine someone playing me or writing a book about who I am. Although I let people write articles and try and express who I am, and it blows up wildly in my face.

Some people might only recognize me half naked in my bikini and bra!

Despite the fact that I have a good-size pair of breasts... in Lois & Clark, I have the opportunity to show the world they're not my only attribute.

International correspondents with their long dictaphones, and dirty jeans, and five hundred words before whiskey, are slouched over the red velvet chairs, in the VIP section in the front, looking for the Story: the Most Macheteing Deathest, Most Treasury Corruptest, Most Entrail-Eating Civil Warest, Most Crocodile-Grinning Dictatorest, MOst Heart-Wrenching and Genociding Pulitzerest, Most Black Big-Eyed Oxfam Child Starvingest, Most Wild African Savages Having AIDS-Ridden Sexest with Genetically Mutilatedest Girls...The Most Authentic Real Black Africanest story they can find.

I think what we are seeing is a vicious circle: by covering the controversies and the conflicting realities, it creates a much distorted perception of Islam and Muslims. When a minority is being taken as a majority, it creates a wrong image.

I suppose when some people see you on TV, they expect you to be this flamboyant, champagne-drinking stud. But I'm not like that.

But most of us who aren't models aren't models, right? And so, you just have to get used to that and sort of read right past it. So. On the sex symbol piece, I don't get that piece. On the personality piece, that people are excited to meet a leader from Mozilla - maybe there's more about meeting me personally than I give credit for, but I find that people are excited about what Mozilla is, more than 'Oh my god, there's Mitchell, look, her hair,' whatever.

I've once gotten in trouble with certain gay activists because I'm not gay enough! I am a morose homosexual. I'm melancholy. Gay is the last adjective I would use to describe myself. The idea of being gay, like a little sparkler, never occurs to me. So if you ask me if I'm gay, I say no.

I'll never accept that I'm a sex symbol. That will mean that someone is a bit too fond of himself. If it happens, I think it's certainly going to be odd. People shouldn't see me as a sex symbol. I'm really just Henry. I'm just telling a story. I could be playing an incredibly unpleasant character who's not sexually attractive at all in my next movie. So I've no expectations at all.

I don't think that anyone has been really created more by the white press than the civil right leaders.