Marianne faithfull quotes

When I found out my mother wanted me to marry a rich man, I instantly didn't want any rich man.

When you split from someone, it doesn't have to mean that you don't love them anymore, you realize that the period of that particular romance is over. One always has to get out before one gets kicked out.

I think you have to really, really want to be a film star.

I got my interest in Lotte Lenya and the Brecht-Weill canon from my parents. And I love classical music - I got that from my parents. I love Cole Porter - that I got from my dad.

You know the first objective is to get out of your hometown, second objective, get it together in the capital. The awful thing about left the school, is that you'd feel you'd be important. It would matter what you did.

I come from a very left wing Socialist family, anti-war and anti-empire.

I haven't got purity, and I don't think I ever did. I have always been, even as a child, a very decadent little person.

I've got to where I've always wanted to be. I just feel more myself, and I've learned not to care what other people think. It's happened slowly, very slowly. But I did it.

I've got quite a good brain and all that, which I've never had to use in singing at all.

I'd love to make more money in America, that's the heart of it. I make much more money in Europe. It's a shame. I'm trying now to make a profit on this next tour, and I'll be much happier.

I'm interested in time, fame, death, beauty, truth, all those things.

I serve black tea, which I call Froggy tea. And I have green teas and all sorts of nice teas. I'm serving tea all the time.

Maybe the most that you can expect from a relationship that goes bad is to come out of it with a few good songs.

There is a land that I can go to When I have time to rest. All the people I love are there And those who love me best.

My father belonged to a commune, and the food was ghastly. My idea of food hell is the salad cream they'd pour all over bits of lettuce, cucumber and tomato. It was just disgusting.

I do have a strong sense of God. It's impossible to explain what I mean when I say that, of course.

The voice of God, if you must know, is Aretha Franklin's.

Rebellion is the only thing that keeps you alive!

Bad behaviour makes men more glamorous. Women get destroyed, thrown out of society and locked up in institutions.

Feminism is the best thing to come out of the '60's.

My story is really an affirmation of my strength and my luck. To live with a great artist like Ted Hughes or Mick Jagger is a very, very destructive role for a woman trying to be herself. In fact, it can't be done.

I'm alive today, I'm well, I'm working, I'm still creative. What more can I say, really?

For some people, marriage may be very groovy. For me, it really isn't. I don't think it really is for most people anyway. Most people are not very happy.

I'd really like people to see me as a real actress, which I am, but they don't. It's hard to get them to see me as a musician, they just see me as a hanger-on to the Stones, which is not what I am at all. It's a good idea, and if something like that would turn up I could do a whole television show. I've thought about playing a landlady, sort of a mad '60s lady, this absolutely insane character. I would love it. It's a great idea.

I have to be able to love somebody except myself and the theater.

I do take care of myself; I get my nails done, and I have a skin doctor, but that's it. I'm clean and groomed.

I was told that I had very likely been clinically depressed for a long, long time, probably since I was 15, or even 14. It explained, to me at least, a lot of my behaviour over the years.

I've done everything I want to do and gone everywhere I want to go.

I don't talk about my private life.

I'm sick of being self-referential. I don't want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.

I never trusted anybody at all. I don't know why it was so hard, I just didn't.

The only time I ever really consider retiring is when I get fed up with the press. Which is often.

I do yoga. I do tai chi. I do a lot to keep my body and my spirit together so I can work.

I never like photos of myself in the beginning. I live with them for three months, put them in a drawer, take them out and look again. I hate the way I look, but of course it's really not that bad.

I know for a fact that Heaven and Hell are here on Earth.

I wish people didn't just think of me in the '60s. I'm not any era.

I like my work, but my life always comes first. I always wanted to have a beautiful life, and the way to do it is in show business.

I am not frightened of much, but I wouldn't like to get ill.

The really explicit phrase is doors of perception.

I'm a Capricorn, and they flower late.

When you are 18, 19, 20, you're used to being photographed all the time, in a certain way. So, the narcissism becomes almost out of control. And the way that young women are photographed, they become addicted to this feedback of the image.

I've simplified much more in my writing. I say what I've got to say, not in metaphor.

I live a very nice life. I have a wonderful time. But it's not lived drawing on a full level. I'm relaxed, cool, and enjoying it.

I do sometimes think I could have done without the drugs actually; that was a waste of time, and a huge risk. But then again, there's nothing I can change, so in a way regret is pointless.

France has been very good for me. It has given me a very worldly-cool attitude.

If I let myself sink into depression, I won't be able to get out. And then I'll be awfully unhappy. I just have to turn my face to the light and walk on. And trust that things will be all right.

To be diagnosed with cancer was a frightening thing, and my first reaction was sheer panic, but I was really fortunate that the cancer was caught at such an early stage that I didn't need chemo or radiotherapy. But I know that cancer is a chronic condition, and once you've had it, you're on the list, because it can come back.

The food that's never let me down in life is porridge, especially with milk and maple syrup, which is delicious. Paris isn't a porridge place, but I can buy it in London when I'm there and bring it back with me.

I shoot my big mouth off; it just pops up! I have to learn to edit myself.

I think it's a great shame that America stopped being a republic and became an empire.

All I have to do is what's right for me.

I've learnt to accept what has happened to my voice, I suppose, but I do wish it didn't sound quite so rough.

I don't see decadence really as what you do, because I don't do much at all that is decadent in my life. But I still am decadent. It's a state of mind, I think.

I'm glad to say my father never felt ashamed of me, but my mother probably did.

I love the Stones, but I've gone to a lot of gigs.

The way I choose to show my feelings is through my songs.

I never saw myself as beautiful. I can look back and see it now, but then? Never.

Penitentiary songs have been a love of mine for years. They are so wonderful.

I've made a contribution to my time and my generation through being myself, not through what I shared with the Rolling Stones. It's very bad for me and very dangerous to see myself as someone who had an influence on this song or that song. It immediately puts me in the position where my worth is dependent on how much of my soul I shared with Mick Jagger, and it's just not valid. You can use the gossip you've heard. You're not getting it from me.

Relationships have a nasty habit of reversing themselves; whatever has been done to you in a previous involvement you'll do to the next person you're involved with, if you get half a chance.

I was anorexic in the 60s and 70s, although it wasn't called anorexia then. I thought people would be nicer to me if I looked very small and delicate, so food wasn't high on my agenda. But it is now.

The equipment you've got really dictates what you're going to do. When I started touring, there were no monitors, so I had to take the sound from the hall, and of course it was on a delay, so I would sing, and then I would hear it back, but later. It was very weird.

Life has changed. People have changed. They are more forgiving, less inclined to rush to judgment. And I have changed.

I once asked my father what he wanted me to be. To my horror, he said, 'sociologist.'

Well, I really didn't enjoy some of the movies I did when I was young.

All I can say is I've been lucky with my body. Well done, little body. I praise it and say, 'You're very good.'

I have to watch out for being lazy.

Of course I have regrets; I'm not stupid.

Never apologize, never explain - didn't we always say that? Well, I haven't and I don't.

I'm a tame actress. I get tired now that I'm entertaining day and night professionally. I think the only reason for going to a party is to pick up a good lay. When you've got a permanent boyfriend it's rather spoilt. Because the fun of a party is to flirt with everyone. I like flirting.

I want to do movies, but I want to do something that's good. I don't want to make any more films until I feel that I'm ready for it. I want to have good work, and a very elegant life. I believe you get what you want.

The first opera I went to see was Maria Callas singing 'Tosca'.

I don't like the compression on compact discs. It's lacking in air, and it's lacking in majesty.

I have always been attracted to the bleaker aspects of life. I love drama.

It's always a good idea to get yourself a famous, rich, and groovy young man. That's one of the best-known methods of furthering your career.

I went to the big Picasso retrospective at the Tate in the sixties, and I think I went to an Andy Warhol retrospective at the Tate in the sixties, too. My mother was very good at taking me to things like that. We lived in Reading, but we went on these cultural trips to London.

I think drugs were used by me as a way of suppressing my natural spirit.

I focus on the individual and not seeing this great big monster, "the press."

I get all dressed up with that Marianne Faithfull face, and the next thing I know, I'm blurting out things that I shouldn't, trying to get attention when, really, I've got everybody's attention already.

Sometimes you just have to get a shock to grow up and wake up, and I've had lots of shocks because it's as though I don't learn the lessons, so something new comes and hits me.

I'm having a great life, and I want to go on having one.

I'm never, never sure which way to go. I'm full of unsureness. That's been a habit for years. I never really want to commit.

The nice thing about us lot is that what we do is of no consequence. We don't do things that are important; we spend our lives doing things which are not important. That's what's nice about us, we're not pompous. We never do anything very bad that's gonna change the world. We're not serious, we're butterflies. We live for a day.

It has been an extraordinary experience and, in many ways, extremely positive.

If you analyze the bad times you find that it's because you wanted to have a bad time.

I've got a lot of little compulsive problems, and I've thought about it a lot. And one of the things I ask myself is, 'What are the things I can do that won't hurt me and will help me?' The first answer is work.

My first job was singing at the Hammersmith Odeon. It was years ago, so I can't remember who I was performing with. I was a sort of anti-climax after two hours of heavy rock-'n'-roll. Seventeen years old in a white dress. It was the first time that I got applause. Wonderful, that noise in my ears.

Working with David Bowie was very interesting, but I couldn't surrender to it. I should have let him produce a record for me, but I'm very perverse in some ways. He's brilliant, but the entourage were rather daunting.

There are so many myths out there about Marianne Faithfull, I had to, um, detach. But I can turn it on because Marianne Faithfull is really an attitude, you know.

When you lose your reputation at 19, you lose everything.

I thought I wanted to go to drama school or university, and that would have been a completely different life. But what got me was the sound, and hearing it. Hearing everything so loud, I loved that back in the studio. I loved that from the very beginning.