Top 70 Shirley Manson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I say embrace the total geek in yourself and just enjoy it. Life is too short to be cool.”

— Shirley Manson

2. “I am not a sexy woman, I’m not beautiful, I’m not a sex kitten, I don’t flirt with people, yet I’ve been tagged more of sex symbol than women who truly are and I that’s solely because I don’t reveal too much: people are curious.”

— Shirley Manson

3. “I’m afraid of happy people. They’re chemically unbalanced.”

— Shirley Manson

4. “I love pop music. Who doesn’t?”

— Shirley Manson

5. “Somehow or another, my mother taught me to push through my fear, always. Feel the fear and do it anyway.”

— Shirley Manson

6. “I feel privileged, to be honest.”

— Shirley Manson

7. “One day I realized that it didn’t matter whether people loved me or not.”

— Shirley Manson

8. “The truth is, I’ve always been wracked with self-loathing and terrible, paralysing depression.”

— Shirley Manson

9. “I’ve always been an outsider. I am an outsider in Garbage. I’m the odd one out by default.”

— Shirley Manson

10. “People don’t associate red hair, pale skin, and freckles with beauty.”

— Shirley Manson

11. “My solo album is dead and buried. We had the funeral. It was sad and I cried a lot but it made such a beautiful corpse that we had an open casket.”

— Shirley Manson

12. “I refuse to step inside the ring and fight like a gladiator against my own. I’m not playing that game. Any woman who has survived a year or more of making music has my undying respect.”

— Shirley Manson

13. “I want to hear from the creature who isn’t blessed with unbelievable good looks and incredible genes. I want to hear from the geek girl, the forgotten girl, the invisible girl and the miserable girl.”

— Shirley Manson

14. “I like the feeling that I’m giving young women self-confidence. It sounds so cliched, but it can be very moving.”

— Shirley Manson

15. “A lot of people these days are not music lovers – they just want to be famous which is a very different thing to what I grew up believing in.”

— Shirley Manson

16. “We’re living in a time when people are struggling to appear perfect.”

— Shirley Manson

17. “You know, it doesn’t matter how beautiful you are, if you don’t have anything interesting to say, then you’re still boring.”

— Shirley Manson

18. “The sensation of never feeling good enough or pretty enough will always be there. It’s a constant dialogue, and you just learn to be more powerful than that other voice. When you hear it come up, you shut it down.”

— Shirley Manson

19. “If Jennifer Lopez could write songs like Fiona Apple’s, she wouldn’t have to spend so many hours at the gym.”

— Shirley Manson

20. “I wouldn’t say that cutting was pleasurable, but there is a sense of euphoria that follows cutting yourself. The quick pinch of pain and the sight of blood snaps you back to the surface and you start to appreciate being alive.”

— Shirley Manson

21. “I am a contradictory mess but I see it as my prerogative to change my mood like the weather.”

— Shirley Manson

22. “I was a redhead and a middle child; both can make you feel excluded. It’s like fighting to be included, in the swim of things. After a while you start to develop a bit of a victim mentality, which isn’t great for a happy life.”

— Shirley Manson

23. “I just want to live my life a little freely and not adhere to any schedule – just make music and have fun.”

— Shirley Manson

24. “I am greedy, and most importantly, game for what’s next.”

— Shirley Manson

25. “Possibly because I grew up not feeling very confident about my own physical appearance, I developed internal devices so that I could integrate into society.”

— Shirley Manson

26. “I couldn’t feel good about myself hanging out in Armani clothes when my girlfriend can’t even pay her heating bill. I’d feel foul and I’d be embarrassed.”

— Shirley Manson

27. “Mozart was a punk, which people seem to forget. He was a naughty, naughty boy.”

— Shirley Manson

28. “I’m 45 years old. I used to be a club girl, but that’s not my world anymore. That doesn’t mean I can’t make music that excites. I think it’s inspiring to see an artist you grew up with take another crack.”

— Shirley Manson

29. “I have a lot of very close girlfriends and sisters – I’m from an all female family. My father often quips that even the cat was neutered!”

— Shirley Manson

30. “A lot of celebrities just want money, fame, power, fancy cars, houses all over the world and have people BOW DOWN to them. To me, that’s frightful behaviour.”

— Shirley Manson

31. “I think young artists are always inspiring because they are coming at worlds from a different point of view.”

— Shirley Manson

32. “What makes a woman stylish is what she has to say and how she chooses to live her life.”

— Shirley Manson

33. “At the end of the day, though, the band members have to be strong. It’s down to the individuals in the unit. Listen to me, I’m talking like I’m in the army and this is my squadron.”

— Shirley Manson

34. “A lot of my friends are artists or musicians or single parent families and I’m totally aware of how difficult it is for them to make ends meet.”

— Shirley Manson

35. “You have to watch all sides of your advancement, you have to make sure people’s bodies and minds are healthy and their morale is cool before you can really go out and play great music.”

— Shirley Manson

36. “I have a temper on me that could hold back tides.”

— Shirley Manson

37. “I have women who offer to sleep with me all the time. But not men. They’re all talk and nay action – as we’d say in Scotland.”

— Shirley Manson

38. “It is YOU who is so busy disrespecting artistry. You disrespect your own remarkable talents and more importantly you disrespect the talent, hard work, and tenacity of all artists when you go so rudely and savagely after such an accomplished and humble artist like BECK.”

— Shirley Manson

39. “I want to hang out in Edinburgh with my friends and eat fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.”

— Shirley Manson

40. “It’s unhealthy for people to never express any kind of negativity or doubt. To have balance, you need to address that side of your thoughts as well as the positive. Otherwise, you tend toward crazy.”

— Shirley Manson

41. “I’ve got no timetable. I’m sort of sick of timetables, to be honest.”

— Shirley Manson

42. “Here’s the tragedy of the modern record business: It’s radio. If you’re not on radio, nobody really is going to hear you or see you or care about you.”

— Shirley Manson

43. “It’s everywhere, constant criticism of women’s appearance in magazines and online. It’s not easy to navigate.”

— Shirley Manson

44. “Humans all want to beat the clock but nobody ever does.”

— Shirley Manson

45. “In terms of fitting in, you know, I don’t have a lot of armor up. I’m a raw nerve and it’s really uncomfortable for a lot of people.”

— Shirley Manson

46. “We should never listen to our feelings. They lead us astray.”

— Shirley Manson

47. “Starbucks is my main fix and it’s usually you people working in there – sometimes they’re actually shaking. It just makes me feel horrendous because I’ve been in that situation.”

— Shirley Manson

48. “If you have any opinions at all or if you’re even remotely verbal then they’re going to call you fiery.”

— Shirley Manson

49. “Until we command the exact same salary as every male counterpart, I feel a political desire to stand by other women. If we don’t stand together, that equality will never be fully realized, and that bothers me.”

— Shirley Manson

50. “It is so hard for musicians when they step into acting is they’re not coming in as a blank slate, they’re coming in with a real set idea of who they are, where they’re coming from, what their politics are, what their tastes are.”

— Shirley Manson