"It's not important to me that people understand me."
Kate Bush to the Toronto Star, 1993
"At the end of the day, I don't have to answer to you, or my ex, or ... I shouldn't say God ... or a man in a suit from the record company. I have to answer to myself."
Amy Winehouse to The Guardian, February 2004
"This career has not been a big float on a boat of success. It’s been up and down, up and down. I guess you have to learn to live with that, that you’re determined and if this is what you do and who you are, maybe that is what makes you an icon.”
"I thought our story and the stories of people like us was kinda getting whitewashed and trampled over with people talking about Britpop on and on and on. There was a massive rock scene, there was a massive drum and bass scene. My band was very successful at the same time as Britpop.”
“In this female genre, we’ve sold more than anyone. We’ve sold more than the metal boys. But it bugs me. I like there to be some testosterone in rock and it’s like, I’m the one in the dress who has to provide it!
"We can play rock'n'roll, but we ignore it, shove it in a corner. We don't see ourselves in the same context as rock'n'roll groups. We're out on a limb. It is dangerous, but it excites us, makes it worthwhile."
"Men are f**king terrified that whatever they say, I’ll have a problem with — but that’s because they’re not listening. I’m not intimidating at all. It’s just that I’m not submissive.”
"That’s what you want to do all along – to move from playing to actually writing something, to go from being one part of the band to feeling that something you’ve done is out there in the world."
"Later in Pulp’s career I was thinking of groups that had written hit songs that never got forgotten, and I thought, ‘Oh, I wish we’d written one of those.’ Then I thought, ‘Oh, we have'."
Candida Doyle of Pulp to Uncut, 2023
"There’s a part of me that loves glamour, and there’s another part that could go camping for seven months and wear the same thing every day and be dirty and disgusting and feel happy doing that."
"I think that the work of an artist is to really keep the imaginative capacity alive that we have as children. As a child, we can create anything out of nothing, and do, on a daily basis. And I find that in order to remain an active and creative artist, I have to keep tapping into that same place."
"It turned into an issue that caught me by surprise... because of [Ash's] massive female fan base. A lot of them thought I was Tim's girlfriend. It quickly became quite obvious that people weren't actually interested in the musicianship; all they cared about was the image which was disappointing."
"I think there probably was a time when it was possible to survive fame, but I think now you have to be a very unusual kind of person to deal with it."