Meat Loaf

My gigs are built on improvisation: I go out there and I'm like the Energizer bunny.

When I do film, I really take on roles and I take on characters.

I never fit in. I am a true alternative. And I love being the outcast. That's my role in life, to be an outcast.

There was a band in Australia named Midnight Oil, and they were a very, very political, and they literally hit you over the head with a hammer. U2 sometimes can hit you over the head with a rubber hammer.

As most people know, I am a vampire, so I have no reflection. Every day, I paste a picture of someone else on the mirror.

In the early 1980s, I got into a war with my management - they just kept on suing me and I lost everything. So I had to go out on tour to make sure the electricity stayed on.

When your name is on the marquee, you either get the glory or you get the hits.

It's like people call me a rock star or this or that. And I go, 'Don't call me that. I don't think of myself in those terms. If you have to call me anything, call me a chameleon.

I'm an actor. I started as an actor. I started on Broadway doing 'Hair' and Shakespeare in the Park.

I'm asthmatic. I was a lot bigger back then, and I still get winded on stage today. But I've learned how to pace it now. I have musical breaks in there.

My life's far too complicated to be summed up in one song. It would take 20 just to represent one single day.

For the past 32 years, I've done nothing outside the entertainment business. I've had some real highs and some real lows, but I love the work so much that I never once thought of quitting.

Just ask anybody who is getting old - everything starts hurting. For me, it's my shoulders, thumbs, knees and feet.

You know, people think I named myself Meat Loaf, even though I didn't. And they think anyone who would name himself Meat Loaf couldn't have an IQ higher than four.

Rock n' Roll came from the slaves singing gospel in the fields. Their lives were hell and they used music to lift out of it, to take them away. That's what rock n' roll should do - take you to a better place.

A lot of actors, they know the camera's there, and if somebody moves around or makes noise or whatever then they get all distracted, but I pretty much lock in. You can't distract me too much.

The day that I ever become hip... please shoot me and put me outta my misery!

'Hell in a Handbasket' is not dealing with the political nature of the country. It's dealing with the humanity and the compassion of the world.

There's no explanation for success. Success just comes out of life.