Boy George Quotes

You get much more done if you go to bed early and get up early.

Leigh [Bowery] affected a posh English voice and elongated his vowels, and you never knew if he was being sincere or mocking you. If I ever commented on one of his outfits he would snip, "Oh, thank you, Mr. Boy George. I do value your opinion." And then he would spin and make some ridiculous noise and mince off.

I used to think of George Michael as being mechanical, like a scientist in a white coat, working in a laboratory, creating perfect harmonies, and all the while I was secretly admiring him.

In writing the autobiography, I can really chuckle when I look at the songs. I was acting out the part. I saw myself as a victim.

What happened during the previews of Taboo [ musical] was that it was the first time I'd ever been written about as a great song-writer - I cried. I absolutely wept, because it wasn't the usual stuff like, "Oh, he was a drug addict and he did this and that ... " It was really looking at the music and it was really complimentary. It was a huge thing.

Karma chameleon: we come and go, we come and go ...

My family knew I was gay when I was 15, long before I got famous. But it's a very different thing coming out to your family and coming out to the universe. That's a big step. Maybe without me, there wouldn't be Adam Lambert. Without Bowie, there wouldn't be me. Without Quentin Crisp, there wouldn't have been Bowie. So everything is part of a big daisy chain.

We were fighting about nothing important while dreaming of the same things.

Part of me looks at the gay movement now and worries that we're losing our individuality.

I suppose there is a lot of toughness in me.

I'd got very successful, everyone knew who I was, but I felt very empty.

Being in the Boy Scouts, you don't think about whether people are gay or straight. You're busy putting up tents and learning to cut sausages.

I think people could be a bit friendlier. The only real contact you have with people is when they're annoyed if you've had a party - you know, it's been a bit too noisy for them or something.

I don't get all this Speedo stuff actually, I mean, whatever happened to the feather boa?

I knew style and content went hand in hand.

And being gay isn't so easy, either I've always said that if anyone ever thought I was straight they must need glasses - but when I finally came out and said, "Yes, I do sleep with men and I'm gay," yeah, I lost record sales. There's no question - big, big time.

I was really good friends with Matthew Ashman, the guitarist in Bow Wow Wow. He died, unfortunately. He was one of my best friends during my sort of punk period.

Jail's like school but you can't leave.

I'm a big fan of Yoko, one of those weird people who really love her music, and who argues with people all the time, because people do write her off.

Gay unions, what is that about? I haven't been invited to any ceremonies, and I wouldn't go anyway. The idea that gay people have to mimic what obviously doesn't work for straight people any more ... I think is a bit tragic. I am looking forward to gay divorces.

I wasn't part of the Taboo crowd the same way I was part of the New Romantics. I suppose I was seen more as an elder statesman because I had been around the London club scene for so many years. To the Taboo crowd I was really seen as a pop star, someone famous.

The world is less homophobic, depending on where you are in the world. As a gay man I feel very strongly about those issues around the world - there've been huge changes and developments, but there are still places where things are scary.

I suppose all of those New Romantic clubs were quite up their own asses in a way. Well, Taboo was up its own ass in a different way, but not in terms of rules.

Leigh [ Bowery] would create fake guest lists and put the most ridiculous names on them - Joan Collins, or really naff soap stars who would never grace the door of Taboo.

The most significant New York club for me was Paradise Garage, where they played house music. This was around '84 or '85.

Madonna is a living, breathing cash register.

A lot of people felt I was getting work because I was Boy George. My response at the time was that there's a lot of DJs making records, they're not all making good records, but they have the right to do that.

I wear makeup and dress this way because I think it makes me look better. I am not doing it to get people to stare at me. If I wanted to do that I could just put a pot on my head, wear a wedding dress, and run screaming down the street.

There's this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That's completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved.

Every freak has a mother. When I met Marilyn Manson I was struck by how nice he was. People are rarely as weird as you anticipate. Except for Courtney Love-who reminded me of that mad snake in The Jungle Book.

I'm of the opinion that as a DJ you must always play what you love and ignore what's 'trendy' because true passion always eclipses what's fashionable. Quality is always fashionable.

Comparing Madonna with Marilyn Monroe is like comparing Raquel Welch with the back of a bus.

The ultimate goal is to be more satisfied. I really don't believe you get wiser because you get older. It's a choice, perhaps not to take some things so seriously.

I don't play big stadium-style dance, but I have discovered, to my delight, that the appetite for real low slung deep house is very much alive.

Sometimes you surprise yourself with what you can handle, and if you come out the other end with some wisdom, then it's not such a bad thing.

Warren Street was at the high end of the New Romantic scene. They were mostly college art students and people who knew top designers.

Leigh [Bowery ] obviously loved having me in the club because I would attract media, and he loved and lived for his column inches.

Whenever there's an interview with me, I might read it, but I don't read the comments because they're so hateful sometimes. When someone writes something nasty, I just think, "If that's your contribution to my day, I really don't need your impoliteness." I'm lucky that people are very cool with me and I get a lot of love. I appreciate that.

I've had to write in a different way because I'm not in a bad place and I'm not heartbroken, so there's no one I want revenge on.

I'm not responsible enough to have a dog - or a child.

Voting for New Labour is like helping an old lady across the road while screaming 'Get a move on!' Even the Tories, who you could once rely on to be completely heartless are pretending to care.

I was approached by this guy Chris Renshaw, who had read my book and had read Leigh's book. He wanted to incorporate both characters - he probably felt Leigh wasn't famous enough and he realized Leigh [Bowery] and I were associated.

A lot of people come up to me all the time and say thank you for helping me be who I am. So my thing wasn't just about sexuality. It was about anyone who felt different; anyone who felt out of place. Being gay was one part of it.

I am what I am. There's nothing I can do about it.

I think drugs played a big role in the Taboo scene. People were taking copious amounts of ecstasy, which had filtered over from New York, and at a certain point you were more likely to spend most of the night in the toilets at the club.

I know that there are some people who don't like me, and that kind of surprises me more than the people who love me.

I think being individual in the show business is what gives you life and longevity.

Tweeting is something you can do wherever you are, on your phone, on the computer, in an airport lounge. It's easy to do, and I do find it fun to communicate with people. It's quite nice that we can have almost direct contact with anyone in the world at any time. I don't know how important it is in terms of one's career. It seems to be pretty much superfluous in terms of that, but it's nice to communicate.

My life hasn't always been a disaster, it's just that when it has, it's been a spectacular disaster.

Seeing bored-looking fans staring at you while you DJ is about as horrible as it gets.

I've never felt as though I didn't belong, I just acted as though I did.

I absolutely admit I had him in the handcuffs so he wouldn't go anywhere while I checked the computer ... I certainly wasn't going to kill him. That's hardly going to do my career any good, is it?

I also tried to avoid doing obvious dance records.

I remember going onstage on Broadway in this Leigh Bowery thing for a track like "Ich Bin Kunst." I've got breasts, this latex dripping down on my head, and I come out in a box. I just remember the audience looking really horrified because Rosie [O'Donnell] was trying to sell the show as sort of Pippin and Annie. She was saying it's a family show.

Leigh Bowery created outfits that made him look deformed, which was very brave. I believe this was the main thing that gave Leigh his edge. His designs were often breath-taking, but it was the way he used his body that was so utterly new and refreshing.

The New Romantic scene was so tiny. Although it got lots of mileage in the media, it was a really small club with only a core group of people. As it got more popular, kids started to come from the suburbs all dressed up, but it -really wasn't as big as it looked.

Leigh [ Bowery] would make up stories about people committing suicide or going on hunger strikes because they were refused entry at the door.

I'm Catholic In My Complications And Buddhist In My Aspirations'

~George O'dowd

Not knowing when to shut up was one of my greatest faults.

The Taboo crowd was certainly less precious. They were happy to end up in a pile of vomit and booze at the end of the night. It was antifashion, in a sense. They were just as obsessive as the New -Romantics but they acted like they didn't care.

I try to exist in a world where there is freedom of opinion, where you're allowed to make jokes. I don't want to live in some PC world where no-one's allowed to say anything.

A difficult crowd will always test your true ability.

Beethoven had a great look. It was very much about the drama of appearance.

The band never actually split up - we just stopped speaking to each other and went our own separate ways.

My mother and father were fantastic, very active. I find it difficult to say this, but I'm quite a loving person and I've always been loving to my friends. In the long run, that pays off. I'm very interested in other people, and if you are, they're interested in you.

I always feel that my whole life is representing the LGBT community. It's kind of what I do all the time.

Certain punk bands were influential because I thought, If they can do that then I can .Hanging around those bands was how I started my first band - In Praise of Lemmings.

I'm not someone who can sing anything. And my favorite singers aren't people whose voice you would say is amazing. I'm a big Bob Dylan fan, a huge David Bowie fan. None of those people have orthodox, cabaret voices. These are people where what they're singing about is just as important as how they're singing it.

I'm much more interested in working and getting on with my music.

For me the most interesting thing about Leigh Bowery was the way he used his body as a style statement. He was a big guy, but, because he was tall and had long legs, he looked in proportion - even sexy - -despite being overweight by conventional -standards.

We changed the name from Sex Gang Children to Culture Club because Jon Moss, our drummer, went to L.A. on holiday and took some demo tapes with him. -Everyone loved the music but nobody liked the name. I -remember getting a postcard from Jon from L.A. saying, "I don't think America's ready for the Sex Gang Children."

I can do anything. In GQ, I appeared as a man.

You find out so many interesting things when you're not on drugs.

When you're younger, you think you're in competition with everyone. You think everyone's success is a threat to you, and this is a thing you grow out of. You get older and you suddenly realize the only person you're in competition with is yourself.

Go home. Let me do my community service.

I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of vaginas. They bother me in the way that spiders bother some people.

She's probably in denial that she's a great big ball of insecurity and I'm quite well aware that I am one.

I just go in my back garden. It's the only place where people don't come and bother you.

A lot of what I've been learning in the last two years is due to therapy - about my sexuality, why things go wrong, why relationships haven't worked. It isn't anything to do with anybody else; it's to do with me.