Morrissey quotes - page 3
GQ: "Were you in love with Johnny Marr?”
M: "Sexually? Absolutely not. There was a love and it was mutual and equal but it wasn't physical or sexual. There are lots of people post-Smiths who would like to make some dramatic homosexual story. There never was one. It's often said that Johnny rescued me but he was also bobbing about in his own lifeboat.”.
Morrissey
When you're a teenager and in your early twenties it seems desperately eternal and excruciatingly painful. Whereas as you grow older you realise that most things are excruciatingly painful and that is the human condition. Most of us continue to survive because we're convinced that somewhere along the line, with grit and determination and perseverance, we will end up in some magical union with somebody. It's a fallacy, of course, but it's a form of religion. You have to believe. There is a light that never goes out and it's called hope.
Morrissey
DK: How often does the seriousness end and the irony begin in your work?
M: Many times. I have a grand and endless capacity to find myself slightly ridiculous. I'm not pretending to be some wallowing prophet, for heaven's sake. I think we all have to sit down and look in the mirror and think, What is that absurd monstrosity?
Morrissey
When The Smiths began it was very important that I wouldn't be that horrible, stupid, sloppy Steven. He would have to be locked in a box and put on top of the wardrobe. l needed to feel differently and rather than adopt some glamorous pop star name, I eradicated Steven which seemed to make perfect sense. Suddenly I was a totally different person. Now when I meet pre-Smith people who call me Steven, I sit there and wonder who they're talking about. I always despised the name Steven, though being spelt with a 'v' rather than a 'ph' made life slightly more tolerable. But it was very important that Steven be drowned nonetheless.
Morrissey
(Eating meat) is really on the same moral level as child abuse. It's the same thing. Animals are like children, they look to us for protection. We should protect them. I really feel quite smug about mad cow disease and foot and mouth and so forth, and I just think ‘Well, what do you expect? People have been saying it for years.
Morrissey
I'm bereft of spiritual solutions. I do believe that there has to be a better world, but that's rather simple. I'm quite obsessed with death. I've gone through periods of intense envy for people who've died. Yes, I have a dramatic unswayable unavoidable obsession with death. I can remember being obsessed with it from the age of eight and I often wondered whether it was quite a natural inbuilt emotion for people who're destined to take their own lives, that they recognise it and begin to study it. If there was a magical beautiful pill that one could take that would retire you from this world, I think I would take it and I suppose that's the extremity of the obsessiveness.
Morrissey
Last night I dreamt
That somebody loved me
No hope, no harm
Just another false alarm
Last night I felt
Real arms around me
No hope, no harm
Just another false alarm
So, tell me how long
Before the last one?
And tell me how long
Before the right one?
The story is old - I know
But it goes on
The story is old - I know
But it goes on
Oh, goes on
And on
Oh, goes on
And on.
Morrissey
MS: Have you ever turned to religion?
M: At no time. I am a seriously lapsed Catholic. It was at the usual time, 10, 11, 12, after being forced to go to church and never understanding why and never enjoying it, seeing so many negative things, and realising it somehow wasn't for me. I can only have faith in things I see. I could never be converted to Buddhism.
Morrissey
TW: I must ask you, what right does the fact that you are a popular and successful popstar give you to comment on political and...
M: Well, I feel that, if popular singers don't say these things, who does? We can't have any faith in playwrights any more, we can't have any faith in filmstars, young people don't care about those things, they're dying arts. And if you say, what ‘right' do you have, the implication there to me is that popular music is quite a low art, it should be hidden, it can be there but let's not say anything terribly important, let's just make disco records or whatever. So I really feel that we do have an obligation and I know that people respect it and they want it and it's working to great effect.
Morrissey
That's the key to modern Britain ... only the mentally castrated are eligible for praise and awards. It's against the law to be intelligent! The dumb have inherited the earth. Because of this, British arts are controlled by completely limited possibilities, and the same faces appear everywhere.
Morrissey