Morrissey

"It was probably nothing, but it felt like the world."

"(About Pop Idols) Obviously, its designed by record company executives who want a cheap success, and they dont want to give money to anybody and they dont want to give contracts, so theyve created this world of very bubbly teenagers who want to be "idols" and they think all they have to do is mime quite well and theyve made it. … But its not the problem of the kids, its the problem of the record companies, because its just an inexpensive way for them to have so-called, I wont say "artists", but erm...Youre nodding, you know what I mean."

"Hand in glove, the good people laugh, yes we may be hidden by rags, But weve something theyll never have"

"The British judiciary continues to label animal protectionists as extremists, whilst being unable to consider the Holocaust carnage inside every abattoir to be extreme."

"I say a lot of things I don’t mean."

"Thats why I do this music business thing, its communication with people without having the extreme inconvenience of actually phoning anybody up."

"I normally live in Los Angeles, if you can call it normal living."

"I dont perform. Seals perform."

"I think Im a realist. Which people who dont like me consider to be pessimism. It isnt pessimism at all. If I was a pessimist I wouldnt get up, I wouldnt shave, I wouldnt watch Batman at 7:30 a.m. Pessimists just dont do that sort of thing."

"I was quite advanced when I was at school, and when I left school it seemed that all these really oafish clods from school were making tremendous progress and had wonderfully large cars and lots of money, and I seemed to be constantly waiting for a bus that never came."

"M: If you cannot impress people simply by being part of the great fat human race, then you really do have to develop other skills. And if you dont impress people by the way you look, then you really do have to develop other skills. And if you are now going to ask is everything I did just a way to gain some form of attention, well thats not entirely true. It is in a small way, but thats in the very nature of being alive. PM: Wanting to be loved? M: To be seen, above all else. I wanted to be noticed, and the way I lived and do live has a desperate neurosis about it because of that. All humans need a degree of attention. Some people get it at the right time, when they are 13 or 14, people get loved at the right stages. If this doesnt happen, if the love isnt there, you can quite easily just fade away. … In a sense I always felt that being troubled as a teenager was par for the course. I wasnt sure that I was dramatically unique. I knew other people who were at the time desperate and suicidal. They despised life and detested all other living people. In a way that made me feel a little bit secure. Because I thought, well, maybe Im not so intense after all. Of course, I was. I despised practically everything about human life, which does limit ones weekend activities"

"Oh, the alcoholic afternoons when we sat in your room they meant more to me than any, than any living thing on earth"