Top 80 Rose McGowan Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “At 13, when I was a runaway, I was taken in by the most amazing drag queens in Portland, Ore. We didn’t always know where our next meal was coming from, but there was so much camaraderie and love. Not to mention, those girls could paint a face, and I learned how because of them.”

— Rose McGowan

52. “I think I ran so hard and so fast, in a lot of ways, from my life and I kind of took a fall. It was like – what do they call it? – post-traumatic stress syndrome.”

— Rose McGowan

53. “The awesome thing about being an artist? You can’t be fired from your own mind.”

— Rose McGowan

54. “I really prize my freedom more than work. I prize just being human and doing other things.”

— Rose McGowan

55. “Gosh, if I’m gonna take a big stand on something I would hope it would be for more than flip flops!”

— Rose McGowan

56. “My life, as you will read, has taken me from one dangerous cult to another, one of the biggest cults of all: Hollywood. I say biggest because short of a nuclear bomb, Hollywood has the farthest reach.”

— Rose McGowan

57. “You have to be at the forefront of culture to create art, which they call “product,” and Hollywood is not. It’s this very old business model, which I think is dying in a lot of ways.”

— Rose McGowan

58. “Quentin Tarantino is controlled insanity, I would say. He’s very loud and fun. I don’t think there’s anybody on the planet like him that I have ever met.”

— Rose McGowan

59. “Since I and so many brave survivors have come forward, titans of every industry have toppled. We survivors have gained our power. We survivors are using our voices in record numbers. We cannot let up, and as hard as it is, we must continue to get even louder, to push even harder. We all count. We all matter. Here’s to freedom, yours and mine. Now go breathe fire.”

— Rose McGowan

60. “I was 13. And on my own for about 10 months, but those were long months. My stepdad wanted me out of his hair and tried to put me in a home, a hospital kind of place for kids with drug problems, which I absolutely did not belong in. So I left that place and struck out on my own .”

— Rose McGowan

61. “I want to have a frank conversation about an inner sickness that I see few, if any, addressing: how and why Hollywood creates a f’d-up mirror for you to look in. How you are seeing yourself through your own eyes, but perhaps not your own mind. Hollywood affects your life in ways you may not even be aware of.”

— Rose McGowan

62. “To the writers who create how we see one another and ourselves: You are responsible. What you write forms the thoughts and self images of billions of humans. Take care with your words and your images. Grow up. Get smarter. Think deep.”

— Rose McGowan

63. “Heterosexual men terrified me. I found them to be dangerous. Not all of them, of course, but it took me some time to learn to be comfortable.”

— Rose McGowan

64. “While I learned, I hid out largely in the gay community, and overall it kept me very safe.”

— Rose McGowan

65. “I was never nervous directing. Not once. I’m more nervous acting. I’m far more nervous on set, before I say my lines, than I ever have been, as a director.”

— Rose McGowan

66. “Thinking whatever is different about you must be stripped from you is the WRONG way to approach things. Thinking you must be homogenized for everybody else’s comfort level, because God forbid discomfort, is the WRONG way, too... Do not bend yourself to make others feel taller.”

— Rose McGowan

67. “I went to regular schools and I was home schooled a lot but I don’t have any history in schools. Like, I literally don’t exist. I didn’t even get a birth certificate until the mid-80s. I always feel like I could be, like, 10 years younger, or maybe I’m 70!”

— Rose McGowan

68. “There was a story that I was in a shoe shop and that I threw a pair of flip flops at the wall, shouting, ‘I can’t believe how overpriced these are!’ I thought, ‘Gosh, if I’m gonna take a big stand on something I would hope it would be for more than flip flops!’”

— Rose McGowan

69. “Why does a man’s desire supersede my right to dignity? What makes certain men think their perversions are more important than a girl’s right to exist as a free human in society?”

— Rose McGowan

70. “You may think that what happens in Hollywood doesn’t affect you. You’re wrong. My darlings, who do you think is curating your reality? Who is showing you who and what you want to be?”

— Rose McGowan

71. “I would like Obama to be tougher on going up against the Republicans, I don’t think he should try to be so moderate.”

— Rose McGowan

72. “I’ve also been on the other side of the looking glass. Watching you. Studying you. Impersonating you. All of us in Hollywood, media, and advertising do. And you know what? We are really good at it. We have had it drilled into us how best to be marketed to you. How best to be sold to you. How to implant what “we” want into your brain, into your thoughts, into your wallet. And it works. You’re sold a fake reality all for the rock-bottom price of $14.”

— Rose McGowan

73. “It’s interesting when you go out into the world and see which of your roles have affected people.”

— Rose McGowan

74. “That poor girl’s been brainwashed into thinking her beauty is all she’s worth, because from the time she was a little child she’s been getting compliments about her beauty. And it becomes something you think you owe other people.”

— Rose McGowan

75. “I like people who are fit. I figure if I work out, you can at least return the favor. Would I go out with a meathead? No.”

— Rose McGowan

76. “One of my goals is to create more art to put out there in the world.”

— Rose McGowan

77. “You may think it’s as simple as forking over hard-earned cash for a night out at the movies or paying a cable bill to be entertained. I’m here to tell you the price you are paying is much higher than you know. You are paying with your mind, your behavior, and your patterns. Things that should have no price tag.”

— Rose McGowan

78. “I think gay marriage should be the national law.”

— Rose McGowan

79. “I think it’s bizarre and tragic how society pushes us to say what we are because of the job we do. The question “What do you do?” really means what do they pay you for, as if that’s your defining characteristic. Everything else is a “hobby.” But those are also things you are and do. Just because you don’t make money at it doesn’t mean you’re not doing it. It’s as valid as going to the office, maybe more so.”

— Rose McGowan

80. “I realized a career is built as much on what you don’t do as what you do do.”

— Rose McGowan

81. “Hollywood operates like the Mafia when it comes to protecting its own. Especially if your “own” is a rich white male. Yes, I said it. But here’s the thing, it’s true. I didn’t make it so, it just is. In other news, the sky is blue.”

— Rose McGowan

82. “We need to look at why so many women believe a man is going to save us. It’s not because of evidence of saving. I haven’t seen a lot of dudes on white stallions pulling up to single women’s homes. In fact, I have seen most women get on their own damn stallion. It’s just male-dominated society that snows us into not noticing it’s we women doing the saving. We are the white stallion and we have to wait for no one but ourselves.”

— Rose McGowan

83. “There are some movies that I absolutely hate but someone else loves – people love things for different reasons.”

— Rose McGowan

84. “I am going to be pretty kick a$$ by the time I’m thirty, and I can’t wait!!”

— Rose McGowan

85. “Theirs was a language I didn’t, and couldn’t, speak. They had concerns in life to which I couldn’t relate; my problems were about surviving. When you have really big, dark things happen to you, it takes a lot more to care about things. It felt like I was about eight thousand years old in a small person’s body, essentially an alien among those who understood traditional societal constructs.”

— Rose McGowan

86. “We women have historically been trained to be pleasant at all times. We need to stop that and be authentic; justifiable anger is a part of that. Being angry is okay; no one is going to die if we women let our anger out in healthy ways. It’s more than okay for women and girls to have emotion that is their own and not connected to what a man does or society says.”

— Rose McGowan

87. “Women have interests, hopes, dreams, aspirations. Beyond being fuckable.”

— Rose McGowan

88. “It was the programming that is given to us girls from the first, the programming that says men’s careers are more important than ours. I tended to go out with powerful men who treated my career like a hobby whereas theirs was the real deal. I think a lot of women do that too. I hope you look at your own life and recognize whether you are minimizing it, because I did.”

— Rose McGowan

89. “It’s time men realized their semen isn’t all that.”

— Rose McGowan