Morrissey Quotes

To me you are a work of art, and I would give you my heart - that's if I had one. ~ Morrissey

No British politician has ever been more despised by the British people than Margaret Thatcher. ~ Morrissey

So the life I have made
May seem wrong to you
But, I've never been surer
It's my life to ruin
My own way ... ~ Morrissey

They are very tame to me. God bless Noel, I'm sure he'll always have a spot on 'Bob's Full House', but I search for something with more bite and rage. ~ Steven Morrissey

He emphasized once again that all action and adventure with moments of meaning happen in a place called elsewhere, and never in the sad soil of Manchester. ~ Morrissey

As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. ~ Morrissey

Doing nothing gives me great pleasure. And believe me, I succeed wonderfully in it. ~ Morrissey

I'm cursed with the gift of foresight. ~ Morrissey

I don't think I'm ever forgiven for anything, which is baffling because I'm not on TV that much. ~ Morrissey

Boot the grime of this world in the crotch dear. ~ Morrissey

Disappointment came to me, and booted me, and bruised and hurt me, but that's how people grow up. ~ Steven Morrissey

The music played, always pointing to the light, to the way out, or the way in, to individualism, ~ Morrissey

Life is very long, when you're lonely ~ Steven Morrissey

Music, you see, is the key. ~ Morrissey

He lives alone, unexcited, disinterested, world-weary and ungiving, yet it is this dry-as-dust approach that makes him fascinating. ~ Morrissey

I have seen one or two psychiatrists. They just sit and nod and doodle. ~ Steven Morrissey

I appreciate a songwriter like Morrissey with so much restraint. ~ Zooey Deschanel

In our lifetime those who kill the newsworld hands them stardom and these are the ways on which I was raised. - Morrissey, The Last of the Famous International Playboys ~ Maureen Johnson

I do think it's possible to go through life and never fall in love, or find someone who loves you. ~ Morrissey

I don't want to go on much longer, really. I think that would suggest a lack of imagination. A certain lack of dignity also. ~ Morrissey

I'm tired again, I've tried again, and now my heart is full.
And I just can't explain ... so I won't even try to. ~ Morrissey

Everything about my life is private, really. I'm not so sure that any of it has ever been public. ~ Morrissey

When Morrissey and I started The Smiths, we thought pop music was the most important thing in the world. It was almost a spiritual thing for us, and because of that, we knew what it meant to be a fan. ~ Johnny Marr

Well, I think the way you feel as a teenager stays with you, forever. I really believe that. And we try to change and we hope that we change, but we don't really in big ways, in serious ways. I think the personality is formed at that time, for the good and for the bad ... We all want to grow up and move on and appear to be different to people. And we want people to see us in a different way. But, I don't know, I think the personality is very, very strongly cemented, and we just bear whatever shortcomings we have and learn to live with it. ~ Steven Morrissey

I wear black on the outside, because black is how I feel on the inside. ~ Steven Morrissey

Killing a stag is like killing a child. ~ Morrissey

Whether it be Beyonce or Justin Bieber, we see singers who have absolutely nothing to offer anyone as they walk off stage clutching three Grammys in each hand. ~ Morrissey

I'm fascinated by people in their eighties and nineties. Especially those who are still creating and living in an interesting way. I am fascinated by them because they have so much to say now that they've lived for so long. ~ Morrissey

there is no such thing as patient wisdom to be found in the sharp agony of the teachers. ~ Morrissey

Most people keep their brains between their legs ~ Steven Morrissey

There's no such thing as good news in America. ~ Morrissey

(About Pop Idols) Obviously, it's designed by record company executives who want a cheap success, and they don't want to give money to anybody and they don't want to give contracts, so they've created this world of very bubbly teenagers who want to be "idols" and they think all they have to do is mime quite well and they've made it ... But it's not the problem of the kids, it's the problem of the record companies, because it's just an inexpensive way for them to have so-called, I won't say "artists", but erm ... You're nodding, you know what I mean. ~ Steven Morrissey

The biggest difference between British TV and American TV is money. But what money doesn't do on American TV, which I thought it would, is buy you time. You don't get more time. You get more toys. ~ David Morrissey

It's always good to find out what you don't want to do. ~ David Morrissey

The pain done to Housman allowed him to rise above the mediocre and to find the words that most of us need help in order to say. The price paid by Housman was a life alone; the righteous rhymer enduring each year unloved and unable to love: ~ Morrissey

David Bowie is detached from everything, yet open to everything; stripped of the notion that both art and life are impossible. ~ Morrissey

I know L.A. well, but it's a police state. ~ Morrissey

My childhood is streets upon streets upon streets upon streets. Streets to define you and streets to confine you, with no sign of motorway, freeway or highway. ~ Morrissey

These tears I'm wailing, I spill not without reason. Remove them, my dearest love. Take me to the place I've been dreaming of, where the grotesquely lonely meet the grotesquely lonely and they whisper, just very softly, Please be mine, Dearest Love. ~ Steven Morrissey

If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it. ~ Morrissey

I once bought a Manchester United hat, which I think was 12 shillings, and somebody ran up behind me and pulled it off and just ran ahead. I thought, 'It's a very cruel world, I'm not prepared for this'. And I decided to get my revenge on society. ~ Steven Morrissey

Sometimes we look around and realize we need new friends. That's the sign that they are just around the bend :) ~ Liz Hester

I can see through the human heart, and I know that life's biggest prize is to have the day before you as yours alone to do with as you wish. ~ Morrissey

The more you ignore me, the closer I get; you're wasting your time. ~ Morrissey

The danger of restorative nostalgia lies in its belief that the mutilated 'wholeness' of the body politic can be repaired. But the reflective nostalgic understands deep down that loss is irrecoverable: Time wounds all wholes. To exist in Time is to suffer through an endless exile, a successive severing from those precious few moments of feeling at home in the world. In pop terms, Morrissey is the supreme poet of reflective nostalgia. ~ Simon Reynolds

The theorists theorize without ever getting their feet wet. ~ Morrissey

Everyday is like Sunday
Everyday is silent and grey ~ Steven Morrissey

War, I thought, was the most negative aspect of male heterosexuality. If more men were homosexual, there would be no wars, because homosexual men would never kill other men, whereas heterosexual men love killing other men. ~ Morrissey

There are some bad people on the rise;
they're saving their own skins by ruining people's lives. ~ Morrissey

Music is like a drug, but there are no rehabilitation centres. ~ Morrissey

We have one life and we should cherish it and make it the best we can. ~ David Morrissey

This IS exactly how things look just before your dreams ignite! ~ Liz Hester

I have never liked Morrissey, and I still don't. I think it's hilarious, actually, what things I've heard about him, what he's really like, and his public persona is so different. He's such an actor. ~ Robert Smith

Even with the recent story about the nurse killing herself in King Edward Hospital, there's no blame placed on Kate Middleton, who was in the hospital as far as I could see for absolutely no reason. She feels no shame about the death of this woman, she's saying nothing about the death of this poor woman. The arrogance of the British royals is staggering, absolutely staggering. And why it's allowed to be I really don't know ... It wasn't because of two DJs in Australia that this woman took her own life, it was the pressure around her. ~ Steven Morrissey

Maureen O'Brien's Bakery Lingo: A Partial Glossary
• 9 donuts - A shutout
• 2 croissants - A full moon
• 3 croissants - A ménage à trois
• 4 bear claws - Full smokey
• 2 bear claws - Half smokey
• The last one of any item - The gift of the Magi
• A baker's dozen of doughnut holes - a PG-13
• Anything in the unlikely quantity of 36 or a lot of something - A Wu-Tang
• Blueberry muffin - Chubby Checker
• Bran muffin - Warren G the regulator
• Any customer who left no tip - A libertarian
• Any customer who only tipped the coins from their change - A couch shaker
• Any person who requested a substitution - Master and demander
• Any person who requested TWO substitutions - Demander in chief
• Any person who requested MORE than two substitutions - The new executive chef

and finally....

• Any vegan customer - A Morrissey ~ J. Ryan Stradal

The world is your mirror...love what you see and you love YOU! ~ Liz Hester

As a performer, there was nobody better than Morrissey. ~ Mike Joyce

I died a thousand deaths of sorrow and lay down in the woods to die ~ Morrissey

Lady Gaga said to me, 'You showed me how it's done.' I have no idea what she meant by 'it.' ~ Morrissey

We hate it when our friends become successful. ~ Morrissey

That Dr. Morrissey had always said that we found excuses to put off doing something that would take our minds off our worries. It was as if we didn't want to lose the luxury of worrying. ~ Maeve Binchy

Yet Lillian is all heart and love, but fearless in the face of foe. ~ Morrissey

None of the family had passed the 11-Plus exam, and henceforth cannot be saved, our futures doomed by an undotted i. ~ Morrissey

If you travel to Germany, it's still absolutely Germany. If you travel to Sweden, it still has a Swedish identity. ~ Morrissey

A boy in the bush is worth two in the hand. ~ Morrissey

I'm not very good at being dull. ~ Steven Morrissey

The Cure: A new dimension of the word 'crap'. ~ Steven Morrissey

I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The 'dazzling royals' have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. ~ Morrissey

The CD image remains heart-sinkingly abysmal compared to the majesty of the LP sleeve. These things count. ~ Morrissey

Tried living in the real world instead of a shell, but I was bored before I even began. ~ Morrissey

All of us, ultimately, we're not that interesting, when it comes down to it. ~ Morrissey

Singing what's in your heart? Naming the things you love and loathe? You can get hurt that way. Hell, you will get hurt that way. But you'll get hurt trying to hide away in all that silence and leave your life unsung. There's no future without tears. Are you really setting your hopes on not getting hurt at all? You think that's an option? You clearly aren't listening to enough Morrissey songs. ~ Rob Sheffield

When your heart feels strangely warm, you've found your love ~ Liz Hester

Nobody can possibly be so hungry that they need to take a life in order to feel satisfied - they don't after all, take a human life, so why take the life of an animal? Both are conscious beings with the same determination to survive. It is habit, and laziness and nothing else. ~ Morrissey

God, come down, if you're really there -
Well, you're the one who claims to care! ~ Morrissey

When they bury me in a church and chuck earth on my grave, I'd like the words 'Well, at least he tried' engraved on my tombstone. ~ Steven Morrissey

We do not charge an author with unpardonable ignorance because his twelfth-century characters never stop arguing about The Smiths. It is possible that the writer, having only a feeble grasp of history, really does believe that The Smiths were around in the twelfth century, or that Morrissey is such a superlative genius as to be timeless. But the fact that this occurs in a work of fiction inclines us to the charitable view that the distortion is deliberate. This is highly convenient for poets and novelists. Literature, like an absolute monarch among his fawning courtiers, is where you can never be wrong. ~ Terry Eagleton

Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today? ~ Mary Manin Morrissey

Your true potential will speak as loud as your willingness to listen will allow it. If you simply breathe for the next 365 days, your life is going to be different, but is that the "different" you want to create in your life? You have to make your possibilities welcome in your life. ~ Mary Morrissey

All kids want such glamorous knowledge. The darkness of it. The hardness of it. The realness of it. The cold fact that life really is fucked. And Sarah, with her Morrissey T-shirts and her unfiltered Camels and her sleep deprivation and her willful compliance with sexual hungers, she's been asking for this awful dispossession, with one mind she's been hot on its trail, and now that she's got it she longs to go back. If she could only go back, and eat the sandwich her mother packed her, with its thoughtful tomato. ~ Susan Choi

Diazapam (that's valium), temazepam, lithium, ECT, HRT - how long must I stay on this stuff? Don't give me anymore! ~ Morrissey

With the world's fate resting on your shoulder - you're gonna need someone on your side.
You can't do it by yourself any longer - you're gonna need someone on your side. ~ Morrissey

Jesus made me, so he should save me from pity, sympathy and idiots discussing me. ~ Steven Morrissey

I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving, England is mine and it owes me a living ~ Steven Morrissey

I can do what I dream of doing, one breath and one step at a time. ~ Liz Hester

Nothing fortified me, and simple loneliness all but destroyed me, yet I felt swamped by the belief that life must mean something- otherwise why was it there? Why was anything anything? ~ Morrissey

Popular music is slowly being laid to rest in every conceivable way ... the ashes are already about us if we could but notice them. ~ Steven Morrissey

Cats will be cats. ~ Morrissey

Chrissie could make people laugh at the funeral of triplets. ~ Morrissey

I think I must be, absolutely, a total sex object. In every sense of the word. ~ Steven Morrissey

I see myself rather like an old discarded dishrag. ~ Steven Morrissey

Those Catholics, they really nab you when you're young. ~ Morrissey

Only classical composers were known by just their surnames, and this suited my mudlark temperament quite nicely. ~ Morrissey

It's so tedious that everyone must be defined. ~ Morrissey

The solo years have been more meaningful to the audiences than the Smiths years, but the press in England only write about me in relation to the Smiths era. ~ Morrissey

Any criticism of Thatcher throws a dangerously absurd light on the entire machinery of British politics. Thatcher's name must be protected, not because of all the wrong that she had done, but because the people around her allowed her to do it. ~ Morrissey

I don't know what I am. ~ Morrissey

Have you ever struggled to find work or love, only to find them after you have given up? This is the paradox of letting go. Let go, in order to achieve. Letting go is God's law. ~ Mary Manin Morrissey

The Internet has obviously wiped music off the human map - killed the record shop, and killed the patience of labels who consider debut sales of 300,000 to not be good enough. ~ Steven Morrissey

I think labels for the most part want to sign new discoveries so that that label alone is seen to be responsible for the rise of the artist. Not many labels want bands who have already made their mark, because their success is usually attributed to some other label somewhere else at another time. ~ Steven Morrissey