Marianne Faithfull Quotes

Rebellion is the only thing that keeps you alive!

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

The really explicit phrase is doors of perception.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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