Marilyn Manson Quotes
Singer-songwriter
I'm not a role model. I'm a role villain.
I think it's the pain and suffering that drive you to become an artist. The art itself should be the pain, sort of exorcising every demon and making you feel like you're a person that matters.
In any story, the villain is the catalyst. The hero's not a person who will bend the rules or show the cracks in his armor. He's one-dimensional intentionally, but the villain is the person who owns up to what he is and stands by it.
When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.
All the seven deadly sins are man's true nature. To be greedy. To be hateful. To have lust. Of course, you have to control them, but if you're made to feel guilty for being human, then you're going to be trapped in a never-ending sin-and-repent cycle that you can't escape from.
Music is the strongest form of magic.
Everything I was afraid of when I was growing up, I've become. I've taken on my nightmares, like the devil and the end of the world, and I've become those things.
To admit you want to have a comeback means you have to admit you weren't what you were supposed to be. You dropped below your own standard.
Don't ever empty the bucket of mystery. Never let people define what you do. It's not about zigging when you should zag. It's not about doing something unprecedented and unpredictable. It's just about never being a word, or something that is not in the process of transformation.
We live in a society of victimization, where people are much more comfortable being victimized than actually standing up for themselves.
In the end we're all Jerry Springer Show guests, really, we just haven't been on the show.
Is adult entertainment killing our children? or is killing our children entertaining our adults?
I think art is the only thing that's spiritual in the world. And I refuse to forced to believe in other people's interpretations of God. I don't think anybody should be. No one person can own the copyright to what God means.
For me, the key to longevity - and immortality, in a sense - has to do with transformation.
My art is not limited to the songs I create but also to the reaction it creates. I like to sit back and look at the whole thing as if it's a tornado that I'm controlling. It's creating chaos. When you create chaos, ideas are turned upside down, and everybody looks at things in a different way.
When you're taught to love everyone, to love your enemies, then what value does that place on love?
The hero is never the star of the story.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm a character being written, or if I'm writing myself.
If you lose who you are, what do you have?
The burden of originality is one that most people don't want to accept. They'd rather sit in front of the TV and let that tell them what they're supposed to like, what they're supposed to buy, and what they're supposed to laugh at.
I never said to be like me, I say to be like you and make a difference.
When I was stalking my special lady friend on MySpace, people would always say, 'Is this really Marilyn Manson or some kind of psycho?' And I'm like, 'Both.'
People only hate what they see in themselves.
It's better to use a curse word than to hurt somebody else, I find.
To me, Satan ultimately represents rebellion.
Man's greatest fear is chaos.
My father had a very violent temper, and he was never home. So I was kind of a mama's boy.
I'm someone who is open-minded to new experiences because they teach you new things.
I care about the people I know and love the most, but I also care about what the people I don't know think in the sense that I want them to think and understand me in a certain way. I don't base my life around either one, and I don't change the way I live to please either set of people, but I do care.
Find out what's really out there. I never said to be like me, I say be like you and make a difference.
The point is that life for me is not going to be the way it is for everyone else. I have a fog machine and movie lights in my bedroom.
Anybody who does not evolve can become a self-parody. I have to evolve on a daily basis just to keep my own interest in what I do.
Sometimes you feel awkward being what you're best at, you feel like you have to be something new.
I don't encourage people to choose any sort of sexuality.
In a sense, terrorism blossomed in the advent of television. Television promotes terrorism in religion and in politics.
Sometimes music, movies and books are the only things that let us feel like someone else feels like we do.
As a kid I had buck teeth and braces and acne. I hated what I saw. I'm still not comfortable, but that's why I change and adapt the way I look.
Rumors, stories... I'm used to them. I got my ribs removed, I was on 'The Wonder Years'... You know there's a different story every day.
I like zombie movies. I like 'The Walking Dead;' I like the metaphor of it, simply because when we go with the zombie concept - if you're bitten by a zombie, you don't transform into something else like a vampire or a werewolf or whatever. You become something that's not you.
I'm kind of shy, and I think that I take that out by performing in front of a lot of people. That's how I get out my shyness.
Sacrifice to me is something you do without expecting something in return.
You can find inspiration for man's behaviour wherever you look.
I don't think I have ever tried to create things to encourage people to hurt others, or themselves.
I am drawn to women who are independent and creative, which is problematic because it's a struggle, a competition of careers. There's jealousy.
I like to make people think differently than they did before I walked in the room.
Johnny Depp is like a brother to me. We have matching tattoos on our backs - Charles Baudelaire, the flowers of evil, this giant skeleton thing. It's kind of a secret. People say to us, 'Why did you get that?' And we say, 'No reason.'
I've started to think that maybe I wouldn't mind passing my demented genius on to some small thing who can set fire and breathe profanity.
Yes, I'm reckless and sometime express no concern for my own well being, and I express a misanthropic view of the world, but to have an opinion, you can't be a nihilist.
People expect me to me a 'shock rocker,' but there's nothing you can do anymore to be shocking.
If I were in a room full of people, I'd rather be the person who is more interesting than the one who is wallpaper.
There's just no great rock albums anymore. There's a lot of rock music out there, but it's very bland and disposable.
I was a pizza delivery boy at the Pizza Oven in Canton. I wanted to get fired so bad, I actually wrecked the delivery car, but they wouldn't fire me because I was the only person they had working there.
For me, art is supposed to be a question mark.
In music, you feel a connection to the voice and think about the person behind it. In art that's secondary.
A lot of people don't want to make their own decisions. They're too scared. It's much easier to be told what to do.
When you want to die, you at least have a goal. You're aiming for something. It's not a good goal, but at least you want something. And you've got anger and fear, but at least you're feeling something.
There's no reason to change what you are, but if you're not being you, then you need to acknowledge that.
Art gives people a reason to be alive.
Finding someone who's willing to drown with you creates a situation where you no longer want to drown.
It's my job to be the Pierrot, the clown, in the theatrical sense.
Videos have to go hand in hand with your music, so that's why, ultimately, they should be created by the artist. And if they're not, it doesn't really add up to me.
My feelings are, if you're gonna lead a rock n' roll lifestyle, don't let it affect your work. I know I can stay up all night and still come in the next day and write a song, and nothing will stop me from doing it. I expect the same from everyone else.
I did vote Obama. But I've never believed in the authenticity of the two-party system.
Part of me is afraid to get close to people because I'm afraid that they're going to leave.
They'll see it. And it doesn't matter if they don't. It's only Rock 'n' Roll. But I do intend to move more into the Mainstream. Marilyn Manson is just the First phase.
I think everybody's got a presentation. Everybody looks a certain way because they want to convey a certain image. You look a certain way because you want people to listen to you in a certain way.
If you lose emotion, and you gain it back, you realise that hate and love are very important to distribute properly. So I'm not going to waste any kind of emotion on things that aren't related to me.
I refuse to say things behind people's backs.
If I think I weigh too much, I'll lose weight; if my hair looks stupid, I'll cut it. I guess I'm my harshest critic. I'm not easily satisfied.
Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised.
People tend to associate anyone who looks and behaves differently with illegal or immoral activity.
From Jesse James to Charles Manson, the media, since their inception, have turned criminals into folk heroes.
If Satan wasn't around, churches would go out of business.
If you're gonna pretend to be something, then you have to at least live up to what it is.
As a kid I just felt like an outsider.
The word 'Antichrist', to me, is the collective disbelief in god.
I just don't like when there's a rumor that says I'm dating someone who is below my standards. But when I got divorced, my ex-wife said I was spending all my time with Lindsay Lohan and Angelina Jolie. I was like, 'Thank you for the big ups!'
Marilyn Manson is a criticism of gimmickry, while being itself a gimmick.
If one more 'journalist' makes a cavalier statement about me and my band, I will personally or with my fans' help, greet them at their home and discover just how much they believe in their freedom of speech.
You might find me outside with a can of hair spray, spraying it with the hope that the sun will burn a hole in the Earth. Another part of me hopes people will grow up and evolve and get smarter. That's the paradox of Marilyn Manson.
The difference between me as Brian Warner or Marilyn Manson is just words. Same personality, sensibility, sense of humor, behavior. He is me.
I like to be unhinged; I like to be unpredictable. I like to make people worry that worse things can happen whenever I go out to a restaurant or act in a movie.
I think confidence is the most appealing quality in any human being or any artist; that's what really attracts us to people.
I can't sleep without the TV on. It doesn't matter where it is. I don't like silence. My ears ring from loud music.
I don't want to feel like I've matured. That's a stupid word that I never want to use.
I went to one AA meeting and I got asked for an autograph.
I don't have anything against Simon Cowell and 'The X Factor.'
Growing up going to Christian school and the concept that you're born a sinner and you don't really have a choice to change who you are has been hammered into my head and created the entire reason why I made art and made a band and made records called 'Antichrist Superstar.'
I was married to someone who wanted me to change. Become more adult, more responsible. I began not to like myself, not like what I do. I lost my identity. Everything began collapsing around me.
I pity anybody who has to spend a day with me.
I don't say things to be offensive; I say things because they're funny to me. It amuses me.
Living in Hollywood, it's easy to have someone flatter you. That doesn't help me.
I've been able to watch and to weather a lot of different periods in entertainment, politics and life.
I wish that my life could be like the movies, like 'Bonnie and Clyde' or 'The Hunger' or 'Harold and Maude.' And... it can be! It maybe just takes somebody else who is as fearless as you. It takes a person who will not hesitate.
If a kid is old enough to drive a car or buy a gun, isn't he old enough to be held personally responsible for what he does with his car or gun? Or if he's a teenager, should someone else be blamed because he isn't as enlightened as an eighteen-year-old?
I'm my most creative between 3 and 5 a.m. That's the way I've always been.
Everything is acting.
The advantage of the internet is that it has taken away the charade of politics. China has heard of democracy and people know about certain concepts they wouldn't have previously.
If you want break it down, rock and roll is about saying what you can't say in normal life to girls, so you have to say it in songs.
I feel like I've dreamed half of my life that hasn't happened yet, so a lot of times I'm going along, and I do stuff, and I know that I've done it. I have deja vus more than I have regular experiences. If half of your day is a deja vu, then you start to wonder, 'What is real and what isn't?'