Morrissey: Likeness

“Age shouldn't affect you. It's just like the size of your shoes - they don't determine how you live your life! You're either marvellous or you're boring, regardless of your age.”

Morrissey

from "The cradle snatchers", article by Frank Worrall, Melody Maker (3 September 1983)
In interviews etc., About life and death

Life , Age , Shoe

“Let’s be realistic … it’s arson. Everybody knows that. You can judge it by the speed by which the corporate media rushed to call it an accident even though the fire had just started and no one was in any position to know anything. Brainwashing! It’s a bit like hearing the full reason behind a plane crash even though the plane has yet to hit the ocean.”

Morrissey

The Interview https://www.morrisseycentral.com/messagesfrommorrissey/234417-the-interview, June 24 2019, morrisseycentral.com
About the Notre Dame fire

Speed

“You shut your mouth,
How can you say I go about things the wrong way?
I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does”

Morrissey

from the song "How Soon Is Now?"
From songs

Love , Way

“I think animals need all the help they can get, because they have none. They have no rights. They have no protection. And so I think animals need help. And I think animals look to humans for protection, and of course humans lead them into slaughterhouses, which to me is just like an image of leading children into a slaughterhouse. There’s no difference. That level of trust and… But it’s a very cruel world.”

Morrissey

From a Norwegian TV interview (2002)
In interviews etc., About vegetarianism and animals

Children , World , Thinking , Help

“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

From an interview by Adrian Deevoy in GQ http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a366/gqarrific/, October 2005, p. 278
In interviews etc., About The Smiths

Love , People

“I think that when you make a record, an album, it has to be a discovery for the person listening to it, so you don't want to pat everything out and say "this was that, this is definite, that's how it happened and that's what you should feel and that's what you should like or dislike."”

Morrissey

It's personal discovery."
From an interview with Russell Brand in 2009
In interviews etc., About pop culture

Feeling , Thinking , Personality

“I could never really make the connection between Christian and Catholic. I always imagined that Christ would look down upon the Catholic church and totally disassociate himself from it. I went to severe schools, working class schools, where they would almost chop your fingers off for your own good, and if you missed church on Sunday and went to school on a Monday and they quizzed you on it, you'd be sent to the gallows. It was like 'Brush you teeth NOW or you will DIE IN HELL and you will ROT and all these SNAKES will EAT you'. And I remember all these religious figures, statues, which used to petrify every living child. All these snakes trodden underfoot and blood everywhere. I thought it was so morbid. I mean the very idea of just going to church anyway is really quite absurd. I always felt that it was really like the police, certainly in this country at any rate, just there to keep the working classes humble and in their place. Because of course nobody else but the working class pays any attention to it. I really feel quite sick when I see the Pope giving long, overblown, inflated lectures on nuclear weapons and then having tea with Margaret Thatcher. To me it's total hypocrisy. And when I hear the Pope completely condemning working class women for having abortions and condemning nobody else… to me the whole thing is entirely class ridden, it's just really to keep the working classes in perpetual fear and feeling total guilt.”

Morrissey

from "All men have secrets and these are Morrissey’s", interview by Neil McCormick,Hot Press (4 May 1984)
In interviews etc., About life and death

Women , Fear , School , Feeling

“And you even spoke to me, and said :
"If you're so funny
Then why are you on your own tonight?
And if you're so clever
Then why are you on your own tonight?
If you're so very entertaining
Then why are you on your own tonight?
If you're so very good-looking
Why do you sleep alone tonight?
I know…
'Cause tonight is just like any other night
That's why you're on your own tonight
With your triumphs and your charms
While they're in each other's arms…"”

Morrissey

From the 1986 song "I Know It's Over"
From songs

Sleep , Night

“I shake like a ship in a storm. It is a fact that even warming moments overwhelm me with despair, and this is why I am I.”

Morrissey

Autobiography

Despair

“Strangely, I liked them (the Sex Pistols) until they made records. I saw them quite a few times before they actually made records. And when they did, it just became… suddenly punk had this enormous scope and was everywhere. Obviously it lost everything. And looking back, I don't really have that much affection for the whole punk thing. It really didn't mean so much to me at all. But of course, I would rather it have been there than not.”

Morrissey

From a radio interview with David Jensen (1983)
In interviews etc., About other artists

Sex , Time

“There's a club if you'd like to go, you could meet somebody who really loves you,
so you go and you stand on your own,
and you leave on your own,
and you go home and you cry and you want to die”

Morrissey

from the song "How Soon Is Now?"
From songs

Love , Home , Cry

“I think the main thing is that I very rarely recognise the actual interview in print. To me, it's like being painted by an artist. And then you see the picture, and they've painted someone else.”

Morrissey

From Oor magazine (February 1987)
In interviews etc., About interviews

Thinking , Painting

“Well, I think when I was a child, more than anything else I wanted not to be ordinary. And I wanted to be considered to be a bit peculiar. When I was at school I wanted to be peculiar and I was delighted when I was at secondary school and I was actually thought to be peculiar (laughs). It was fantastically good for me because I looked around me and I thought, 'Well, however you are I don't want to be like you, so if you think I'm unbalanced then I'm delighted.”

Morrissey

That really stayed with me.
From "Morrissey speaks to NME", interview by Alex Needham, NME (17 April 2004).
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

School , Thinking

“(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

From the TV documentary The Importance of Being Morrissey (2003)
In interviews etc., About vegetarianism and animals

Children , People , Disease , Feeling

“I think I'm a realist. Which people who don't like me consider to be pessimism. It isn't pessimism at all. If I was a pessimist I wouldn't get up, I wouldn't shave, I wouldn't watch Batman at 7:30 a. m. Pessimists just don't do that sort of thing.”

Morrissey

In interviews etc., About himself and his work
Source: from "Stop me if you've heard this one before", interview by Len Brown in NME (20 February 1988)

People , Thinking

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

Morrissey

Autobiography

World

“I don't recognise such terms as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and I think it's important that there's someone in pop music who's like that. These words do a great deal of damage, they confuse people and they make people feel unhappy, so I want to do away with them.”

Morrissey

Source: [239, The Queer Encyclopedia of Music, Dance, and Musical Theater, Claude Summers, Cleis Press Start, 1 November 2004, 9781573448758] In interviews etc., Sexuality

People , Music , Thinking , Feeling