Annie Lennox Quotes

I'm passionate about everything, actually. I'm passionate about life.

In a sense, the music business and I haven't always been the best of bedfellows. Artists often have to fight their corner. Your music goes through these filters of record labels and media, and you're hoping you'll find someone who'll help you get your work into the world.

A lot of music you might listen to is pretty vapid, it doesn't always deal with our deeper issues. These are the things I'm interested in now, particularly at my age.

In a way, it's all down to perception, isn't it? And everyone has their own take on everything.

I think that the thing is, all those years of creating music or trying to express something of a dark shadow, an existential angst that I have felt most of my life and still feel today, to not be overwhelmed by it. Music, in a way, is a great vehicle, a means by which one can express all these somewhat contradictory feelings.

We need money to scale up the services that bring medicine to mothers. The United States government's doing that. There's a global fund that's providing money. mothers2mothers provides for mothers who come in who don't have education, who don't have support. mothers2mothers employs mothers with HIV, mothers who were patients recently in the very same facilities. We take those mothers who were patients who've had their babies, we bring them back, we train them, we pay them, to be health care professionals.

Poor countries are being forced to deal with an unprecedented health crisis without the means to tackle it . Governments can only show how seriously they are taking this crisis by taking immediate action to provide four million extra health workers and to grant those in need access to affordable medicines.

Having children, they're not your property. They need to figure out their own views. I think my daughters have a pretty healthy self-awareness, but I can't speak on their behalf.

People ask me so many questions.

You have a bigger view, of something bigger than you, and you have to view that and take that in mind. At times you feel like despair rises up over hope, then other times you feel hopeful again.

I'm not a risk taker physically. I just have no interest in swinging myself off a mountaintop or parachute gliding or skiing down a totally vertical drop. These things don't interest me in the slightest, but I get so caught up in the color or the texture of the sounds of something. That's so funny to me.

Let me be the only one to keep you from the cold
Now the floor of hell is laid, the stars are bright as gold
They light for you, they shine for you
They burn for all to see
Come into these arms again and set your spirit free

To try to help people have babies in a healthy way and to celebrate the process of delivering a child which will be healthy is, I think, almost the best part of healthcare.

Music is a great vehicle for communications, and I have a certain platform. I have an opportunity and I have to take it.

I had a number of different labels. A lot of people assumed I was gay because I was wearing a man's suit, and one had to learn that it's OK, people will do that, and you don't always have to explain it one hundred percent, because they're never going to accept what your own interpretation is. It's all illusory.

Although I have lived in London, I have never really considered London my home because it was always going to be a stopping-off point for me, and it has been too.

If you do nothing, if a mother doesn't come for care, if she breastfeeds her baby, the chances of the baby getting HIV are about 40%. So it's about the difference between 40% and zero. This is almost totally preventable. But it requires mothers coming for care and getting the medicines they need, and getting the education and support they need.

I want people to start thinking about what it means to be HIV-positive and to ask questions about that.

Success breeds the excitement to continue going.

I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to see my children grow up well.

I understand what it is for a woman to want to protect their children and give them the best they can.

I'm appalled the word feminism has been denigrated to a place of almost ridicule and I very passionately believe the word needs to be revalued and reintroduced with power and understanding that this is a global picture.

The worst thing someone gets is isolated. Isolation is the darkest part of any condition.

I haven't lived my life through my daughters. Some parents devote everything to their children, which must be so hard, and it's very beautiful. But I'm a working parent, so I've always kept my own life.

I didn't want to be perceived as a girly girl on stage.

It's harder to get out of bed when you've failed.

As a creative person, you just put something out into the consciousness of the society you live in.

You're never quite sure where the song is going, because you might not find the word to rhyme with the end of the line. You have to find associative meaning to get you there. So it's rather like doing a crossword puzzle backwards. A kind of strange, three-dimensional, abstract crossword puzzle.

I guess what I'm passionate about is, I see so many things that I find that there's no real solution to, and you're only here for such a brief moment in time, even if you live to be a hundred years old. Yet, what happens within that time frame? So many things happen.

If you come face to face with some really challenging situations and tragic circumstances - you are going in there with a purpose. You are not going in there as a tourist. You're not going there just to merely observe. You have a purpose, and your purpose is to tell that story, to share that story for the bigger benefit of millions of other people. Your purpose is to create that bridge so you can give that story the dignity and the focus that it deserves, and you can become a part of the amplification that needs to be there.

I don't think feminism is about the exclusion of men but their inclusion ... we must face and address those issues, especially to include younger men and boys.

Fashion is temporary; fashion is a race. What it's doing is giving you something that you say, "This is the outer wrapping of me." Style is something else. It's not quantifiable. Fashion is about selling. Fashion is about what's in. Style is independent of that; style is individual.

There was a time when I looked to other people for recognition, because I didn't have enough confidence to trust my own judgment. Now I'm not looking for reassurance, because I realize how fickle people are. My own strength is the best I can have.

Our ancestors are totally essential to our every waking moment, although most of us don't even have the faintest idea about their lives, their trials, their hardships or challenges.

Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion.

I have always felt a little homeless. It's a strange thing.

You just decide what your values are in life and what you are going to do, and then you feel like you count, and that makes life worth living. It makes my life meaningful.

The dynamic between two individuals starts off with everything warm and nice and fabulous and good. Working and living together can serve you quite well, but when it starts to go wrong - oh, boy!

Such is the scale and depth of poverty in many parts of the world that it won't be ended overnight. That is why if, like me, you want to see an end to poverty, you need to be in it for the long haul.

I sang a lot as a little girl and entered competitions. I loved singing in choirs, but it was as I got older that I really found my voice.

I enjoy multi-tasking, so I want to do a lot of different things. I want to keep all the plates spinning.

Fear paralyses you - fear of flying, fear of the future, fear of leaving a rubbish marriage, fear of public speaking, or whatever it is.

This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead
This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...
The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
"These are the contents of my head
And these are the years that we have spent
And this is what they represent
And this is how I feel
Do you know how I feel?"

~Annie Lennox

In memory, you can access something from the past, anything that you've experienced that you remember - it's there. Now, you might have a memento of it in a photograph or in a film or a building or some clothes that you wore. There might be something that connects you to this memory. But all of us are just all caught in this time, whatever that is.

I think it takes a lot to put oneself in a place where, you know, that thing about "Feel the fear and do it anyway." You wonder what the driving force is that makes you want to do that and not just stay in a safer place.

I was brought up in a tenement house in a working district. We didn't even have a bathroom! We had a gaslight in the hallway and a black-and-white TV.

I've never been a social person.

I was perceiving myself as good as a man or equal to a man and as powerful and I wanted to look ambiguous because I thought that was a very interesting statement to make through the media. And it certainly did cause quite a few ripples and interest and shock waves.

Making a Christmas album is looked upon by some people as the thing you do when you are heading towards retirement.

I'm appalled that the word 'feminism' has been denigrated to a place of almost ridicule and I very passionately believe the word needs to be revalued and reintroduced with power and understanding that this is a global picture. It isn't about us and them.

I watch 'Mad Men,' I knit scarves, I cook and am very, very normal. Honestly.

I'm just an ordinary person.

There are two kinds of artists left: those who endorse Pepsi and those who simply won't.

To be human is to have a whole spectrum of these experiences that arise within us.

You have to face things, have faith in what you do and go for it. Think, 'What's the worst that could happen?'

The inner world is very potent for me - I don't ascribe to any God or Jesus or Buddha - I just have a sense of it and revere it along with the natural world and human consciousness.

Dying is easy, it's living that scares me to death.

I'm not living my life under the spotlight for anybody.

Imagine living in abject poverty and not knowing anything other than that for generations. Or alternatively, imagine being born into a really wealthy family, but there was no real love. Everyone's living these extraordinary, interesting lives whether they know it or not.

You know, I would say that songwriting is something about the expression of the heart, the intellect and the soul.

Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing emotion - very powerful emotions. That's what draws millions of people towards it. And, um, I found myself always going for these darker places and - people identify with that.

I think life on the road really suits very egotistical men. It's set up for kings.

Everything is illusory. You cannot label something and feel that that is the beginning, middle, and end of it.

We're all born, and if you're going to live to be elderly, you'll have gone through a life journey different than anyone else's. It's unique to you, but you'll have some common themes.

I'm an only child, you know, originally. I'm not a child anymore, but I certainly tend to spend a lot of time on my own.

One realizes after a long time that, actually, we are contradictory, all of us.

We would like to see the virtual elimination of the transmission of [HIV] from mother to child by 2015 ... We believe it can be achieved with political will.

I am fascinated by history and particularly the Victorian era.

I'm a female but I have a masculine side and I'm not going to negate that part of myself.

Green is a label for a certain attitude to life, a certain kind of respect that one might have for the very source of things that we take for granted.

There's always darkness around, and if you focus on the darkness, you don't know where to go. But if you direct yourself at the light - there it is! It's right there.

Most women are dissatisfied with their appearance - it's the stuff that fuels the beauty and fashion industries.

It's not fair to compare one artist to another because they all come with their own sort of elements to the picnic, you know.

I wouldn't say that I've mellowed. I'm less mellow, perhaps.

I don't take myself as seriously as some people think, and I'd hate anyone to think I was preaching. That's the last thing I want.

Whatever you do, you do out of a passion.

Life is not quantifiable in terms of age, but I suppose in my fifties I am more grounded and more at ease in my own skin than when I was younger. I have a confidence that I didn't have before from the experiences I've had.

I think people in Great Britain are a bit jaded sometimes.

I live in a world of possibility and opportunity. You look for the light. There's darkness everywhere but you look for that spot of light and you work your way towards it, and you do what it takes to get there.

The world is a heartbreaking place, without any question.

Actually, I'm quite a domesticated person. I love the little things of home.

I don't feel there are enough women artists out there who are saying anything of tremendous relevance.

Ask yourself: Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world.

The general population still thinks HIV is something that came in the 80s and went away, or that it only affects the gay population or intravenous drug users.

I was born an original sinner
I was born from original sin
and if I had a dollar bill
for all the things I've done,
there'd be a mountain of money piled up to my ( ... )

As you get older, there will be a new challenge arising. What you thought you'd accomplished once, maybe the goal post has shifted and it's not what you're pursuing anymore, because you're not interested in that anymore, you know?

When things are starting to work, you get up at five in the morning thinking, what are we going to do today? You stay up until one in the morning getting it done, and then you start the next day with the same energy, because it's working!

It's a very telling thing when you have children. You have to be there for them, you've got to set an example, when you're not sure what your example is, and anyway the world is changing so fast you don't know what is appropriate anymore.

Fundamentally, we are all in the same place: we're born, we live, and we're going to die. In between, we'll have joy and we'll have sadness.

What's really interesting is when you get a brand-new wave that has no connection to anything else. It always reflects society. The flappers would cut the dresses and make them looser, they smoked, their hair was short. It was a rebellion against the corset and the Edwardian era.

Desire, despair, desire. So many monsters.

There's a lot of women's organisations, but they're all working separately. If you get people together, as a collaborative voice, it's strong.

I'd rather support the issues I truly believe in than give my vote to parties that court votes at the time of the election. I like to think that my vote strengthens the green foundation stone.

If one woman is suffering, then we are all suffering, and we need to put a voice to that.

I'm very intrigued that in this culture of reality television and celebrity - which is an enormous industry and generates billions and billions of dollars - we're so resourceful.

I want people to understand me as a person with views, not just performing songs.

I think the whole experience of being a human being on the planet is such a mystery, to be honest. Trying to figure out one's purpose and [asking] "What is it all about?"

The very fact that the planet is probably unsustainable with all that we've done to it and are doing to it, it's an appalling piece of evidence. It shows our complacency, our lack of passion or inclination to be authentic and really understand our true values. It's consistently depressing, but nevertheless, we carry on.

I would like to see the gay population get on board with feminism. It's a beautiful organisation and they've done so much. It seems to me a no-brainer.

I've never been a social person. When I grew up, the other girls would all be combing their hair and exchanging lipstick, and I just couldn't do that group thing.