Top 90 Beth Ditto Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “A beautiful plant is like having a friend around the house.”

— Beth Ditto

2. “As with most phobias, the fear of flying does make some sense, but if ever there was a fear worth quashing then this is it. After all, life is short, and there’s a great big world to explore out there.”

— Beth Ditto

3. “I have no control over what people think of me but I have 100% control of what I think of myself.”

— Beth Ditto

4. “I find inspiration everywhere. I love challenges and my favorite thing is to find something ridiculous and be like “if it’s all that I have available to me, I am gonna make it look the best that I can”.”

— Beth Ditto

5. “I’ve had a ton of fast-food jobs – it changes your approach to human interaction forever.”

— Beth Ditto

6. “My mother told me Homer Ditto was not my father. Nope. Mom had had a fling with some other guy who was my dad. Some dude who didn’t stick around too long who Mom was happy to get rid of. She chose Homer, and Homer chose me, so he lent me his name even though I didn’t have his blood.”

— Beth Ditto

7. “Not everyone wants to be sexy everyday, wearing tight dresses and spanx...”

— Beth Ditto

8. “I work really well under pressure but I really hate doing things on a timeframe.”

— Beth Ditto

9. “My life hasn’t been conventional and it hasn’t been linear. I’ve had to make it up as I’ve gone along, which has taught me a lot. If you don’t accept the obvious options that are laid out for you, it’s up to you to work out where you’re going and to create your own specific rules and goals.”

— Beth Ditto

10. “My dad liked to boil a squirrel head and suck the brains out the nose. Smaller than a chicken, bigger than a rat.”

— Beth Ditto

11. “Why wear pants when you can wear a muumuu?”

— Beth Ditto

12. “I’m on a diet. It’s very strict: all hot dogs. Just sausages, constantly. It’s working out – I’ve gained fifteen pounds!”

— Beth Ditto

13. “I love Adele so much and it’s honestly not because we’re both big.”

— Beth Ditto

14. “I never said I wanted to be a singer for the rest of my life.”

— Beth Ditto

15. “I knew that if I wanted to stop being a pushover I had to get comfortable with small rejections myself. That took some work, but because of it I can now say ‘no’ to other people with a clear conscience.”

— Beth Ditto

16. “I’m a great believer in karma, and the vengeance that it serves up to those who are deliberately mean is generally enough for me.”

— Beth Ditto

17. “I said to my teacher, ‘I can’t be a singer because I’m not pretty enough, and I’m fat.’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Tell that to Nell Carter, babe.’ That changed my life forever!”

— Beth Ditto

18. “I love sad songs. They say so much. I love country music but even the happy songs sound really sad.”

— Beth Ditto

19. “This archaic idea – that a woman who is unmarried and childless at 30 is somehow unnatural – will probably always exist, and, like most social standards, it is ridiculous.”

— Beth Ditto

20. “When I moved out of my mom’s house at 18 I was almost as sad to leave her sewing machine behind as anything else.”

— Beth Ditto

21. “I’m shameless, and I love a pun. There’s a lot of Beth puns.”

— Beth Ditto

22. “I really worshipped Mama Cass a lot. Mama Cass, who was really fat and she didn’t lose weight. Yeah, she went on diets but for the most part of her life and the better part of her career she was a big person.”

— Beth Ditto

23. “I have no control over what people think of me but I have 100% control of what I think of myself, and that is so important. And not just about your body, but so many ways of confidence. You’re constantly learning how to be confident, aren’t you?”

— Beth Ditto

24. “You know how people love to glamorize poverty? There’s nothing glamorous about it. But it did make me really creative. Those days, I was literally taking t-shirts in the day and sewing them back together to make dresses for the night.”

— Beth Ditto

25. “Reclaiming the word ‘fat’ was the most empowering step in my progress. I stopped using it for insult or degradation and instead replaced it with truth, because the truth is that I am fat, and that’s ok. So now when someone calls me fat, I agree, whereas before I would get embarrassed and emotional.”

— Beth Ditto

26. “I was born fat and have always been, which was just fine and even healthy and cute until I turned ten or so. Puberty hit like a hurricane and brought a new set of rules. All of a sudden it was my fault I was chubby.”

— Beth Ditto

27. “ABBA was a direct influence on me.”

— Beth Ditto

28. “High school wasn’t so bad though because, by then, I had worked out that there were far more nerdy kids and poor kids than there were rich, popular kids, so, at the very least, we had them outnumbered.”

— Beth Ditto

29. “For me the greatest revenge of all is having a happy adulthood, waking up in my gorgeous turquoise bedroom in the morning beside a person who really inspires me. That’s the best revenge a girl-loving girl from the Bible belt could possibly have. And, importantly, it’s healthy.”

— Beth Ditto

30. “Aretha Franklin was a teenage mom, a musician who came from an incredibly Christian background, but there was a lot of love, which is really inspiring in a feminist way.”

— Beth Ditto

31. “You know, either I’m too fat or I’m flavour of the month. I don’t feel either, but maybe I’m both, who knows?”

— Beth Ditto

32. “There is no rule in the pink-triangle guide to coming out that you must wear a rainbow flag cap and organise a full band parade.”

— Beth Ditto

33. “I was given baby doll toys myself, and they proved a stark reminder that my life was expected to revolve around childbearing – just as my mom’s had before me, and her mom’s had before her.”

— Beth Ditto

34. “It’s funny how something so normal and mundane that you see every day-your body-can be controversial. The shock value is intense. It’s like carrying an art piece around with you all the time.”

— Beth Ditto

35. “As a kid, I was always mad – just noticing the women at Thanksgiving, running around the kitchen, while the men were watching football. For one, I don’t want to cook, and for two, I hate football. I was stuck in the middle.”

— Beth Ditto

36. “There is something to be said for people who have to work hard, be creative, produce what they have with little – or no – means. Those of us from poor homes have the advantage of thinking for ourselves and of knowing that when times get hard, things could always be worse.”

— Beth Ditto

37. “My number-one theory in life is that style is proportional to your lack of resources – the less you have, the more stylish you’re likely to be.”

— Beth Ditto

38. “I thought to be feminine was to give in to straight culture, or the beauty standard, but in my heart I had a flair for fashion and style. They were passions I kept secret because I didn’t understand I could love clothes and hair and makeup and still like girls.”

— Beth Ditto

39. “I’m passionate about color. My best friend and I sit and look at Pantone books for fun.”

— Beth Ditto

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40. “I have a lot of feminist idols. My favorite thing about growing up in Arkansas – well, not favorite but something I’ve always felt grateful for – was that I really had to dig for what I could. There was no Internet. There wasn’t tons of feminist literature floating around.”

— Beth Ditto

41. “I love Vivienne Westwood. Her work is so interesting, you can always find something that’s great and fits you.”

— Beth Ditto

42. “Products are a must – full stop. I’m sorry to say it, but that bob won’t look so sleek on its own – you need a little help. It doesn’t have to be the high-end stuff that they sell in the salon. Products you find in the supermarket are just as good, and sometimes better.”

— Beth Ditto

43. “I always was really confident about myself, about my voice, myself as a person, my body, all of those things, but as a songwriter – I just didn’t identify as a songwriter at all.”

— Beth Ditto

44. “In moments when I question if I should be having kids, I think of all those phone calls from my sister-in-law, in which, 3,000 miles away, I hear my nephews screaming for her attention. I tell her I have to go because I am packing to leave for Europe, and her tone flatlines: ‘That must be nice.’”

— Beth Ditto

45. “To be thin and to stay really thin, sometimes some people literally do coke all the time. Some people smoke cigarettes instead of eating. That’s crazy. But that’s ‘okay’ because you look healthier.”

— Beth Ditto

46. “I believe I owe all the best parts of my adulthood to embracing my imperfections and showcasing them.”

— Beth Ditto

47. “Do I ever think Gossip will be really massive in America? No, I don’t think it’ll happen – and that’s fine. It’s kind of nice because I get to experience everything at once. I get to come home and it not be weird, like in Paris or something. It is nice to be completely anonymous.”

— Beth Ditto

48. “Portland is a place where you can find a community as a feminist, a vegan or a fat activist. Artists, musicians, knitters, and filmmakers can all meet like-minded souls. It’s proved the perfect place for me and all my punk friends.”

— Beth Ditto

49. “I hate to do what I’m told, that’s why I’m not good at 9-to-5s.”

— Beth Ditto

50. “We all seek approval, and our mother’s seal is usually the most important. The nitty gritty is that we have to accept ourselves, even if it is just to be ready for the next cut-down. Mom’s blessing or not.”

— Beth Ditto