Marilyn Manson

Things have become devalued to the point where people don't realize the repercussions, that they're devaluing themselves. It could end up bringing about chaos, a lawless situation.

Everything I was afraid of when I was growing up, I've become. I've taken on my nightmares, like the devil and the end of the world, and I've become those things.

I can't satisfy myself with just trying to tie all of my imagination into music, especially when music is not appreciated as an art form as much as it used to be.

In music, you feel a connection to the voice and think about the person behind it. In art that's secondary.

This is the culture you're raising your kids in. Don't be surprised if it blows up in your face.

If you believe in what you're doing, you're going to make money. When you question it, you won't.

The word 'Antichrist', to me, is the collective disbelief in god.

I care about the people I know and love the most, but I also care about what the people I don't know think in the sense that I want them to think and understand me in a certain way. I don't base my life around either one, and I don't change the way I live to please either set of people, but I do care.

My feelings are, if you're gonna lead a rock n' roll lifestyle, don't let it affect your work. I know I can stay up all night and still come in the next day and write a song, and nothing will stop me from doing it. I expect the same from everyone else.

All the seven deadly sins are man's true nature. To be greedy. To be hateful. To have lust. Of course, you have to control them, but if you're made to feel guilty for being human, then you're going to be trapped in a never-ending sin-and-repent cycle that you can't escape from.

Everything I was afraid of when I was growing up Ive become. Ive taken on my nightmares like the devil and the end of the world and Ive become those things.

Sometimes you feel awkward being what you're best at, you feel like you have to be something new.

I'm not a role model. I'm a role villain.

Find out what's really out there. I never said to be like me, I say be like you and make a difference.

I feel like Ive dreamed half of my life that hasnt happened yet so a lot of times Im going along and I do stuff and I know that Ive done it. I have deja vus more than I have regular experiences. If half of your day is a deja vu then you start to wonder What is real and what isnt

Marilyn Manson is a mockery of American pop culture.

If I think I weigh too much, I'll lose weight; if my hair looks stupid, I'll cut it. I guess I'm my harshest critic. I'm not easily satisfied.

I dare you all to write one more thing that you won't say to my face.

I think art is the only thing that's spiritual in the world. And I refuse to forced to believe in other people's interpretations of God. I don't think anybody should be. No one person can own the copyright to what God means.

I think people have to take responsibility for their own actions.

I'm completely unlike a lot of other performers in the past who have been forgiven or come to terms with the real world because they tell everyone their performance is 'just a show.' And so, people say, 'Oh, it's OK then. We don't care. He's not really a bad person.' It's not just a show for me. It's my life.

From Jesse James to Charles Manson, the media, since their inception, have turned criminals into folk heroes.

I think everybody's got a presentation. Everybody looks a certain way because they want to convey a certain image. You look a certain way because you want people to listen to you in a certain way.

I'm thinking about entering a Marilyn Manson costume contest to see if I lose.

I realized that I started writing songs to make people feel how I felt, rather than just making them feel something. That's not the way I should do things.

As a kid I just felt like an outsider.

The difference between me as Brian Warner or Marilyn Manson is just words. Same personality, sensibility, sense of humor, behavior. He is me.

Marriage changes everything.

Are people raised to be villains or vilified like I have become?

I think it's the pain and suffering that drive you to become an artist. The art itself should be the pain, sort of exorcising every demon and making you feel like you're a person that matters.

The point is that life for me is not going to be the way it is for everyone else. I have a fog machine and movie lights in my bedroom.

Anybody intelligent enough to realize what America is, is not going to sit around and do nothing about it. They're going to be the same way that I am. They're going to be the same way our fans are. They're going to be pissed.

If you're gonna pretend to be something, then you have to at least live up to what it is.

I don't need to drive. I have no business driving. I would never be able to find my keys.

I think confidence is the most appealing quality in any human being or any artist; that's what really attracts us to people.

I've found a woman I can relate to. That's something - and I don't even feel sappy saying it - that, if anyone has that, don't lose it, because it's probably the only thing that you can ever really find any satisfaction from.

I've been able to watch and to weather a lot of different periods in entertainment, politics and life.

In a sense, terrorism blossomed in the advent of television. Television promotes terrorism in religion and in politics.

My father had a very violent temper, and he was never home. So I was kind of a mama's boy.

Comedians have a huge carte blanche and the ability to get away with saying a lot of things.

People expect me to me a 'shock rocker,' but there's nothing you can do anymore to be shocking.

When I was stalking my special lady friend on MySpace, people would always say, 'Is this really Marilyn Manson or some kind of psycho?' And I'm like, 'Both.'

I believe a lot about psychology, or I'd like to learn about it - I'm someone who likes to learn about everything.

America puts killers on the cover of 'TIME' magazine, giving them as much notoriety as our favorite movie stars.

The time that people aren't expecting what's going to happen, I find that's the best time to really cause the damage that needs to be done.

When you're taught to love everyone, to love your enemies, then what value does that place on love?

If a kid is old enough to drive a car or buy a gun, isn't he old enough to be held personally responsible for what he does with his car or gun? Or if he's a teenager, should someone else be blamed because he isn't as enlightened as an eighteen-year-old?

It's better to use a curse word than to hurt somebody else, I find.

Marilyn Monroe wasn't even her real name, Charles Manson isn't his real name, and now, I'm taking that to be my real name. But what's real? You can't find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best.

We live in a society of victimization, where people are much more comfortable being victimized than actually standing up for themselves.

When you're in a relationship, if you just break it down to regular terms, people are attracted to something, and that's what they want you to be, and that's what you should just be, and for me, it's very simple - if I meet a girl and I say, 'This is what I like about you. Just continue. Every day.'

If Satan wasn't around, churches would go out of business.

People tend to associate anyone who looks and behaves differently with illegal or immoral activity.

What doesn't kill you is gonna leave a scar.

I like zombie movies. I like 'The Walking Dead;' I like the metaphor of it, simply because when we go with the zombie concept - if you're bitten by a zombie, you don't transform into something else like a vampire or a werewolf or whatever. You become something that's not you.

My art is not limited to the songs I create but also to the reaction it creates. I like to sit back and look at the whole thing as if it's a tornado that I'm controlling. It's creating chaos. When you create chaos, ideas are turned upside down, and everybody looks at things in a different way.

Jesus is a half-naked guy, hanging, nailed to a cross, and then people wear that around their neck, and then those are the people that are upset about violence in movies.

There's nothing that anyone could say about me that would hurt my feelings.

I'm kind of shy, and I think that I take that out by performing in front of a lot of people. That's how I get out my shyness.

These people are artists. These people are musicians. They're taking it out and trying to express it that way.

I fall in love very easily.

Leave me in a room with some crayons and I'll draw on the wall.

I'm my most creative between 3 and 5 a.m. That's the way I've always been.

If you lose emotion, and you gain it back, you realise that hate and love are very important to distribute properly. So I'm not going to waste any kind of emotion on things that aren't related to me.

I've started to think that maybe I wouldn't mind passing my demented genius on to some small thing who can set fire and breathe profanity.

I like to be unhinged; I like to be unpredictable. I like to make people worry that worse things can happen whenever I go out to a restaurant or act in a movie.

What I know is my music gets blamed for school shootings.

I don't encourage people to choose any sort of sexuality.

I decided to make music again at a time when I couldn't have had more obstacles.

I don't have anything against Simon Cowell and 'The X Factor.'

I did vote Obama. But I've never believed in the authenticity of the two-party system.

A lot of people don't want to make their own decisions. They're too scared. It's much easier to be told what to do.

I was married to someone who wanted me to change. Become more adult, more responsible. I began not to like myself, not like what I do. I lost my identity. Everything began collapsing around me.

Art gives people a reason to be alive.

People only hate what they see in themselves.

Watching movies is my one distraction.

Everybody feels like [a misfit] at different points in their life. If you feel like who you are is right for you, then you are beautiful.

I'm absolutely not looking for someone who agrees with me about everything or someone who wants to please me by believing what I believe.

I can't turn off the way I think, and that's essentially who I am, who anybody is.

When you want to die, you at least have a goal. You're aiming for something. It's not a good goal, but at least you want something. And you've got anger and fear, but at least you're feeling something.

I just don't like when there's a rumor that says I'm dating someone who is below my standards. But when I got divorced, my ex-wife said I was spending all my time with Lindsay Lohan and Angelina Jolie. I was like, 'Thank you for the big ups!'

Part of me is afraid to get close to people because I'm afraid that they're going to leave.

I haven't looked at marriage in the conventional sense, as far as settling down. I look at it as putting faith in another person, which has always been hard for me to do.

Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised.

Fear is something I instill in other people, mostly young girls.

If you lose who you are, what do you have?

My first memories of religion were being taken to Episcopal church. My father was Catholic, but my mother, I believe, was Episcopal. So I sort of veered off into the watered-down version of Catholicism.

I was a pizza delivery boy at the Pizza Oven in Canton. I wanted to get fired so bad, I actually wrecked the delivery car, but they wouldn't fire me because I was the only person they had working there.

If one more 'journalist' makes a cavalier statement about me and my band, I will personally or with my fans' help, greet them at their home and discover just how much they believe in their freedom of speech.

There's no reason to change what you are, but if you're not being you, then you need to acknowledge that.

In any story, the villain is the catalyst. The hero's not a person who will bend the rules or show the cracks in his armor. He's one-dimensional intentionally, but the villain is the person who owns up to what he is and stands by it.

When I turned about 14, I developed a friendship with this guy whose mom was the secretary to Ernest Angley, the faith healer, who's very popular in the Midwest. He had a television show, and he was sort of like Liberace mixed with Jerry Falwell - very glitzy, very high-tech.

I've never treated anyone in my band like they're not on the same level as me. I'm not that kind of person.

I pity anybody who has to spend a day with me.

Marilyn Manson is a criticism of gimmickry, while being itself a gimmick.

You might find me outside with a can of hair spray, spraying it with the hope that the sun will burn a hole in the Earth. Another part of me hopes people will grow up and evolve and get smarter. That's the paradox of Marilyn Manson.

I'm not going to be some kind of PC, tree-hugger.

I'm so famous, people expect me to sell as many records as Celine Dion or Puff Daddy.

I went to one AA meeting and I got asked for an autograph.

If I were in a room full of people, I'd rather be the person who is more interesting than the one who is wallpaper.