Morrissey: Thing

“There is no such thing in life as normal”

Morrissey

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Lauretta Bender / Quotes / 1954 Senate Subcommittee Hearings into Juvenile Delinquency, "Testimony of Dr. Lauretta Bender, senior psychiatrist, Belleveu hospital Newyork N.Y." http://www.thecomicbooks.com/bender.html
From songs

Sad , Moving On , Life

“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

from "I've always felt like an exile" by Andrew Billen in The Times (30th May 2006)
In interviews etc., About love

Pain , Religion , Hope , Light

“Oh, the alcoholic afternoons
when we sat in your room
they meant more to me
than any, than any living thing on earth”

Morrissey

From the song "These Things Take Time"
From songs

Alcohol

“I say a lot of things I don’t mean.”

Morrissey

interview by Andrew Harrison, Word Magazine (June 2003)
In interviews etc., About interviews

“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 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

“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

“That's why I do this music business thing, it's communication with people without having the extreme inconvenience of actually phoning anybody up.”

Morrissey

From the TV documentary The Importance of Being Morrissey (2003)
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

People , Music , Communication , Business

“I think if I'd led an acceptably frivolous teenage life I wouldn't be singing in this group. I'm sure if you have a great time and get everything you want, all the friends you want, then you tend not to be so ambitious. If you're deprived of certain things it makes you very resilient and you kick very hard for what you want. And I wanted something very special because I'd led such an unspecial life previous to the Smiths.”

Morrissey

From "Keep young and beautiful", interview by Bill Black, Sounds (19 November 1983).
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Life , Thinking , Singing , Time

“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

“(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

“I listen to the radio now that we seem to be on it quite a lot, but before that, I didn't really listen a great deal. I gave up for a while. But other groups… without really trying to sound terribly down on modern music, much of it really doesn't affect me a great deal. It seems tragically tidy, and everybody has their little safety nets and their little life rafts, and once people seem to get a hit they seem to just dilute the formula constantly and there's no risk involved, and it's really so desperately tidy, that… I want to change things. But I don't want to imply that The Smiths are a high-risk situation anyway, of course they're not. They're immediately listenable. But it just needs somebody with some heart and some brain. I think popular music needs brains at the moment.”

Morrissey

From a radio interview with David Jensen in 1983
In interviews etc., About pop culture

Life , People , Music , Thinking

“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

From The soft touch", interview by Mat Snow, Q (December 1989)
In interviews etc., About life and death

Faith , Religion , Understanding , Time

“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

from "Granada Reports", interview by Tony Wilson, Granada TV February 1985
In interviews etc., About politics and society

People , Faith , Art , Music