Top 103 Quotes & Sayings by Roisin Murphy - Page 2

I wasn't embraced as an Irish artist back in the Moloko days. Modern electronica isn't what you think of when you think of Irish music.

Music has given me a fantastic lifestyle.

The sound of 'Take Her Up to Monto' and 'Hairless Toys' is the sound of me and the producer in the studio doing whatever we like. There is no reference. It's too easy to be referential now; I'm trying to find something else.

I don't like permanency. I just like to slip and slide, and in identity, I think that's a very feminine artist's point of view.

My father ruined me for men. Not many can live up to him.

I'm quite drawn to women artists who use themselves in their work. There is a very feminine point of view, the use of female archetypes. I love artists who play with those kind of things genuinely.

I've only ever had surprises. My whole career's a surprise!

I think I have an instinct of, like, the right record comes knocking at my door and says, 'Want to come out to play?' and I go.

I'm proud that I've even had a career, but 'proud' isn't the first word I'd use. I feel lucky that I moved to Manchester when I was 12 because I don't think I could have done this in Ireland. And I feel lucky that the government took care of me from the age of 16 to when I signed my first record deal at 19.

If they were siblings, 'Hairless Toys' would be the nice child, and 'Take Her Up to Monto' is more of a problem child.

I've not got any terrible stories of what I had to do to scrabble my way to the top, obviously, because I didn't scrabble my way to the top. I just scrabbled my way to the middle!

My music's like waiting for a bus. You wait a long time for one, then a whole heap of them come along.

I work with men a lot, and there's a yin and a yang that goes on when you work one guy and one girl. And there's things that I bring that they don't bring and things they bring and I don't bring.

I like taking different elements - clothes, shoes, lighting - and creating a total transformation. But it's never about hiding: it's about drawing something out from deep inside of me that's really true. I'm always trying really hard to tell you the truth. That's what this is all about for me.

When I started out, the idea of wearing interesting clothes seemed to contradict the idea of being a serious artist. The first Moloko record, 'Do You Like My Tight Sweater?' was kind of a reaction to all that.

Ambition can get you freedom.

There'll always be a part of me that wants to remain mysterious.

I really do prioritise humour in people. It's a sign of intelligence. One of the most important things I heard that moulded me was Derek and Clive. That sense of release when I heard them for the first time, crying and laughing, was akin to seeing Sonic Youth for the first time.

Ireland is a great place to be odd.

Originally, I thought of being a photographer and nearly went to art school, but I got a record deal instead.

When I had my first child, I went back to Ireland to live with my mother. So, a typical day there was me being a mother, with my mum showing me how to do things.

I work extremely hard, but I love every minute of it. Although I couldn't work as hard if I felt there was a ceiling on anything. I spent £125,000 on four pictures for the sleeves for 'Overpowered,' and I loved spending it! It was like making a little movie.

I love Andrew Weatherall; he's so real and uncompromising and a sweetheart.

I feel more like an artist than a pop star, and I accidentally fell into what I do. Everything was just an experiment.

I think my whole career has been marked - or marred - by what people presume about me. But even that's fed back into the creativity. I'm saying that I'm about contradiction, that you can't put me into a box.

I won't let anything destroy me.

You can't get a better education in what it is to write songs until you listen to American soul music.

I'm a situationist when it comes to anything creative, and that stands with the visual part of anything I do as well. I deal with the concrete things I have in front of me, and I think that's a wise way to be.

Humour is ahead of everything creatively. I think if things aren't humorous, they are just crap.

Designers become translators for me. That's why I've gone to people like Gareth Pugh and Viktor and Rolf - they are speaking a nuanced language. Fashion says a lot for me.

I couldn't even sing when I started.

I don't really know if I am thought of as a style icon. I don't feel like that at all. Music comes first, but I also just enjoy being creative in whatever I'm doing, be it wearing clothes, making images, or performing.

I became a singer and a songwriter by learning on the spot, so think I always need to be slightly out of my comfort zone when I do something. I've never stopped being experimental because that's how I started.

Timeless and unclassifiable - that's the goal. My oddness is the pursuit of this above all else.

There's a great deal of tension between so many kind of distinctive and restrictive female archetypes and images in the world. When you play with the archetypes, you get free.

I've got crap teeth, crap hair. I never have facials. I still have hairs in the middle of my eyebrows.

I don't have a personal stylist, because I don't need one. I just really enjoy meeting designers and picking up clothes.

The reason why I'm not a pop star is I would have hated it. I'll stick to being an artist. I'm not trying not to be commercial; I am just doing what I do. I have finely tuned tastes, and that gets prioritized above everything else. That's just how it is.

That's the good thing about pop. You can do whatever you like... it's a bendable medium.

I use maps in my phone a great deal because I can't tell left from right. Having easy access to maps has given me a completely different life. When I first moved to London, I couldn't get anywhere and spent so much money on cabs because I couldn't figure it out.

When a friend of mine introduced me to the music of Luca C & Brigante I was stuck with an apocalyptic feeling, as if I were listening to the sound of a party at the end of the world. And with such strong imagery coming to mind I was only too happy to write with them when they asked. Flash of Light is about that last night on earth, a forewarning of the end of an era and a last chance to Love.

Unzip my body, take my heart out

If you were a child and every time your relatives had a few drinks, they'd be running after you with scary faces and big hands to pull you back to sing Don't Cry For Me Argentina, you wouldn't like singing either.