Steven Patrick Morrissey Quotes

I just want people that like my music to like me.

I'm not a fan of anybody music who I feel like a sucka. I don't listen to you. They play you in the club, you can have the #1 jam, but if I know your character, how can I listen to your music?

I think since I'm not particularly well-known as myself, it's funny all the different perceptions people have of me. Like, if someone's only seen me in 'Death Proof,' they think I'm sort of a ditzy girl who says stupid things and wears revealing outfits all the time.

I have people tell me all the time, 'I was expecting you to be mean.' Why is that? Because you saw me in a movie? That's acting.

I've never got on with the British press because they've always given me such a hard time. Once they build a band up they just want to do people down. They shouldn't concentrate on the colour of someone's shirt they should listen to the music.

People can have so many ill-conceived ideas about me based on the parts that I play. I've had guys, when I've been single, come out of the woodwork to date me and I've found out very quickly that they were expecting some kind of whirlwind, some dramatic crazy person - and that's just not me.

I think it has been a weird mistake to have people with their own music careers going on and judging people because when they're too critical, it affects them. They don't want to be that honest, because they need to keep their appearance up.

'The White Album' is a record I can go back to time and time again, and always find something different that I never noticed or appreciated before.

You have to be tough-skinned and willing to accept criticism, and at the same time, just try to do music that you like and you are proud of and not just whatever you think it's going to take to get you on the radio.

I'm not trying to stay in the same place and I'm not trying to compete with what's currently in fashion. That would be dishonest. But, at the same time, I'm different and the music reflects that to some degree.

I'm loath to use my personal life to promote what I do, but at the same time, I don't like a journalist going away with no more than you could get off Wikipedia, where most of it's invented anyway.

I wanted to be famous for my music and my talent, and I always wished I could cut it out when I left the stage.

I just feel as though it's become a situation where people have manifested this caricature of who I am, and they act as if there's no real person inside of it.

If you look at someone like Joe Strummer or John Lennon, when you heard their music you knew that they wrote it and they cared about it.

I'm not a big fan of trying to be a sex symbol or any of that stuff because I really like the music to speak for itself.

I try to spend a lot of time thinking of what it is I want to say, and how I want to say it. Mainly because I know what it's like as a fan to hear music that is just exactly what I needed.

One night I was standing on Third Avenue playing my guitar, when this big Irish policeman came strolling by, and stopped to listen to my singing and playing. When I was done, he politely handed me a ticket for disturbing the peace, while at the same time telling me how much he liked my voice. I wish I still had that ticket.

There's still people who think me being married to a sista is an act. What, you think I'd make that up for a persona?

Nothing sounded as sincere as Nirvana's music. It took a long time for me to accept that any other music could be good in other ways. Including my own.

A lot of young musicians in Stockholm are about keeping tradition alive and moving it forward at the same time.

I'd always loved strings. When I was in high school and saw strings playing on stage, an orchestra or a symphony, all those bows moving at the same time... wow.

I think there's just so many people in the world that don't feel understood, and when you hear a song and you go, 'Oh, that song understands me,' that's an amazing feeling. I get it when I listen to the radio... That's a beautiful part of music.

I don't want kids listening to my music thinking it's for their parents. I want them to feel it's theirs.

I would literally have to go meet people so they could see I didn't have big red hair and wear high heels constantly. It was just really ingrained in people.

When I hear that young people have come to the theater for the first time to listen to opera, I'm very happy. Because it's the same thing that happened to me as a child. When I first heard the tenor voice, I immediately fell in love with this kind of music.