Boy George Quotations

I'm being honest, I say what I think.

I started going to Madame Louise's, the lesbian club where all the punk bands used to go - the Sex Pistols, the Clash. I remember seeing Billy Idol walk in there; he was gorgeous.

I'm of the opinion that as a DJ you must always play what you love and ignore what's 'trendy' because true passion always eclipses what's fashionable. Quality is always fashionable.

Seeing bored-looking fans staring at you while you DJ is about as horrible as it gets.

I would rather have a cup of tea than sex.

I know that there are some people who don't like me, and that kind of surprises me more than the people who love me.

A lot of people felt I was getting work because I was Boy George. My response at the time was that there's a lot of DJs making records, they're not all making good records, but they have the right to do that.

What's really sad is that a lot of very talented people are being forced to do things that are very embarrassing and I don't intend to be one of them.

Sometimes you surprise yourself with what you can handle, and if you come out the other end with some wisdom, then it's not such a bad thing.

I've had to write in a different way because I'm not in a bad place and I'm not heartbroken, so there's no one I want revenge on.

I try to exist in a world where there is freedom of opinion, where you're allowed to make jokes. I don't want to live in some PC world where no-one's allowed to say anything.

A difficult crowd will always test your true ability.

My life hasn't always been a disaster, it's just that when it has, it's been a spectacular disaster.

You get much more done if you go to bed early and get up early.

Part of me looks at the gay movement now and worries that we're losing our individuality.

She's probably in denial that she's a great big ball of insecurity and I'm quite well aware that I am one.

Separation penetrates the disappearing person like a pigment and steeps him in gentle radiance.

A lot of what I've been learning in the last two years is due to therapy - about my sexuality, why things go wrong, why relationships haven't worked. It isn't anything to do with anybody else; it's to do with me.

An actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening.

I don't want to be a figure of disappointment.

I knew style and content went hand in hand.

Remember that I was out of the closet at the age of sixteen. My parents knew I was gay; I'd had to tell them.

I suppose there is a lot of toughness in me.

Luckily, I'm not one of those people who wants to be young; it's never bothered me.

People say things about me all the time and I get over it. I've had some appalling things told about me.

Very few people can truly divorce themselves from what they feel emotionally and sexually.

I've never been a bad person and always had quite good morals. There's always been a side of me that's been quite proper, but it's got distracted here and there. Now I'm the person I should be.

I don't play big stadium-style dance, but I have discovered, to my delight, that the appetite for real low slung deep house is very much alive.

Beethoven had a great look. It was very much about the drama of appearance.

The ultimate goal is to be more satisfied. I really don't believe you get wiser because you get older. It's a choice, perhaps not to take some things so seriously

When Culture Club broke up, I hadn't been going out a lot because we'd been working all the time, so I suddenly had this period of leisure. And it was just around the time that the whole acid house thing kicked off in London.

My mother and father were fantastic, very active. I find it difficult to say this, but I'm quite a loving person and I've always been loving to my friends. In the long run, that pays off. I'm very interested in other people, and if you are, they're interested in you.

I just go in my back garden. It's the only place where people don't come and bother you.

I never thought I'd be doing records a year after I started - I had no idea it would last as long as it did.

Well there are those who think you can only succeed at someone else's expense.

I think people could be a bit friendlier. The only real contact you have with people is when they're annoyed if you've had a party - you know, it's been a bit too noisy for them or something.

I used to think of George Michael as being mechanical, like a scientist in a white coat, working in a laboratory, creating perfect harmonies, and all the while I was secretly admiring him.

I'm not responsible enough to have a dog - or a child.

I also tried to avoid doing obvious dance records.

I always feel that my whole life is representing the LGBT community. It's kind of what I do all the time.

I can do anything. In GQ, I appeared as a man.

I don't really feel part of the pop scene.

I'd got very successful, everyone knew who I was, but I felt very empty.

I'm a big fan of Yoko, one of those weird people who really love her music, and who argues with people all the time, because people do write her off.

I'm much more interested in working and getting on with my music.

I've never felt as though I didn't belong, I just acted as though I did.

I didn't think anyone was going to buy 'Do You Really Wanna Hurt Me?' It was really personal, not a hit record, I thought. I wanted us to sound completely different. Shows how much I knew.

As a kid, I would've loved to get a tweet from David Bowie or Joan Rivers or Tom Cruise. It's great that you can communicate with people and it's instant.

I'm not someone who can sing anything. And my favorite singers aren't people whose voice you would say is amazing. I'm a big Bob Dylan fan, a huge David Bowie fan. None of those people have orthodox, cabaret voices. These are people where what they're singing about is just as important as how they're singing it.

I think being individual in the show business is what gives you life and longevity.

Whenever there's an interview with me, I might read it, but I don't read the comments because they're so hateful sometimes. When someone writes something nasty, I just think, "If that's your contribution to my day, I really don't need your impoliteness." I'm lucky that people are very cool with me and I get a lot of love. I appreciate that.

I don't get all this Speedo stuff actually, I mean, whatever happened to the feather boa?

I was unwelcome in the U.S. for four years.

You find out so many interesting things when you're not on drugs.

My family knew I was gay when I was 15, long before I got famous. But it's a very different thing coming out to your family and coming out to the universe. That's a big step. Maybe without me, there wouldn't be Adam Lambert. Without Bowie, there wouldn't be me. Without Quentin Crisp, there wouldn't have been Bowie. So everything is part of a big daisy chain.

I'm always being inspired .

I absolutely admit I had him in the handcuffs so he wouldn't go anywhere while I checked the computer... I certainly wasn't going to kill him. That's hardly going to do my career any good, is it?

Gay unions, what is that about? I haven't been invited to any ceremonies, and I wouldn't go anyway. The idea that gay people have to mimic what obviously doesn't work for straight people any more... I think is a bit tragic. I am looking forward to gay divorces.

My God is better than your God

Karma chameleon: we come and go, we come and go...

Leigh [ Bowery] would make up stories about people committing suicide or going on hunger strikes because they were refused entry at the door.

For me the most interesting thing about Leigh Bowery was the way he used his body as a style statement. He was a big guy, but, because he was tall and had long legs, he looked in proportion - even sexy - -despite being overweight by conventional -standards.

The fabulous side of Taboo was dressing up and dancing like no one was watching you. There were no rules. You had Jeffrey Hinton playing every kind of music. It was like going back to when I used to deejay at Planet in '79, where you'd mix in nutty things like hip-hop or reggae or The Sound of Music [1965] or other film soundtracks - whatever.

Leigh [Bowery ] obviously loved having me in the club because I would attract media, and he loved and lived for his column inches.

Taboo was kind of celebrating trash, the kind of records you secretly loved, like Yes Sir, I Can Boogie, by Baccara [laughs] - things that you probably shouldn't like.

I felt that making records in a traditional way - putting them out in the same way, wasting loads of money - was just a pointless exercise.

Certain punk bands were influential because I thought, If they can do that then I can .Hanging around those bands was how I started my first band - In Praise of Lemmings.

The Taboo crowd was certainly less precious. They were happy to end up in a pile of vomit and booze at the end of the night. It was antifashion, in a sense. They were just as obsessive as the New -Romantics but they acted like they didn't care.

I suppose all of those New Romantic clubs were quite up their own asses in a way. Well, Taboo was up its own ass in a different way, but not in terms of rules.

I was approached by this guy Chris Renshaw, who had read my book and had read Leigh's book. He wanted to incorporate both characters - he probably felt Leigh wasn't famous enough and he realized Leigh [Bowery] and I were associated.

What happened during the previews of Taboo [ musical] was that it was the first time I'd ever been written about as a great song-writer - I cried. I absolutely wept, because it wasn't the usual stuff like, "Oh, he was a drug addict and he did this and that . . ." It was really looking at the music and it was really complimentary. It was a huge thing.

I remember going onstage on Broadway in this Leigh Bowery thing for a track like "Ich Bin Kunst." I've got breasts, this latex dripping down on my head, and I come out in a box. I just remember the audience looking really horrified because Rosie [O'Donnell] was trying to sell the show as sort of Pippin and Annie. She was saying it's a family show.

I was really good friends with Matthew Ashman, the guitarist in Bow Wow Wow. He died, unfortunately. He was one of my best friends during my sort of punk period.

The New Romantic scene was so tiny. Although it got lots of mileage in the media, it was a really small club with only a core group of people. As it got more popular, kids started to come from the suburbs all dressed up, but it -really wasn't as big as it looked.

Leigh [ Bowery] would create fake guest lists and put the most ridiculous names on them - Joan Collins, or really naff soap stars who would never grace the door of Taboo.

Warren Street was at the high end of the New Romantic scene. They were mostly college art students and people who knew top designers.

Tweeting is something you can do wherever you are, on your phone, on the computer, in an airport lounge. It's easy to do, and I do find it fun to communicate with people. It's quite nice that we can have almost direct contact with anyone in the world at any time. I don't know how important it is in terms of one's career. It seems to be pretty much superfluous in terms of that, but it's nice to communicate.

The Taboo scene was a kind of deconstructed version of the New Romantics. The Taboo crowd was using a lot of the visual ideas that had already been used. I remember the first time I spotted Leigh Bowery and Trojan parading around in clubs: They were in their "Pakis from Outer Space" look, and the makeup was quite similar to one of my old looks, because I was quite fond of wearing blue, green, or yellow foundation, and so I was pretty dismissive of them at first.

I was about 16 when punk started to happen. It was so exciting. You had a social depression going on in the U.K. There was a sanitation strike. London was really grim, gray. You had Margaret Thatcher coming in. It was a really revolutionary time.

A lot of Donna Summer and things that maybe weren't trendy anymore or weren't hip in gay clubs but you'd hear them at Taboo.

When I first went to New York, I didn't really go out to clubs. It was the height of Culture Club so I didn't really have a social life. It was only after I had been to New York a few times that I started going out.

I was about 16 when punk started to happen. It felt like you had this naïve idea that you could change things just by wearing something.

Leigh Bowery was actually quoted as saying, "Flesh is my most favorite fabric." I've seen many a freak make a scene and go, but Leigh was a special kind of exhibitionist because he was dedicated and saw it as an art form.

Go home. Let me do my community service.

Sex has never been an obsession with me. It's just like eating a bag of crisps. Quite nice, but nothing marvellous.

Comparing Madonna with Marilyn Monroe is like comparing Raquel Welch with the back of a bus.

Being in the Boy Scouts, you don't think about whether people are gay or straight. You're busy putting up tents and learning to cut sausages.

The band never actually split up - we just stopped speaking to each other and went our own separate ways.

And being gay isn't so easy, either I've always said that if anyone ever thought I was straight they must need glasses - but when I finally came out and said, "Yes, I do sleep with men and I'm gay," yeah, I lost record sales. There's no question - big, big time.

Voting for New Labour is like helping an old lady across the road while screaming 'Get a move on!' Even the Tories, who you could once rely on to be completely heartless are pretending to care.

In writing the autobiography, I can really chuckle when I look at the songs. I was acting out the part. I saw myself as a victim.

We changed the name from Sex Gang Children to Culture Club because Jon Moss, our drummer, went to L.A. on holiday and took some demo tapes with him. -Everyone loved the music but nobody liked the name. I -remember getting a postcard from Jon from L.A. saying, "I don't think America's ready for the Sex Gang Children."

Madonna is a living, breathing cash register.

The world is less homophobic, depending on where you are in the world. As a gay man I feel very strongly about those issues around the world - there've been huge changes and developments, but there are still places where things are scary.

I wasn't part of the Taboo crowd the same way I was part of the New Romantics. I suppose I was seen more as an elder statesman because I had been around the London club scene for so many years. To the Taboo crowd I was really seen as a pop star, someone famous.

On Madonna: She's a gay man trapped in a woman's body.

Jail's like school but you can't leave.

I think drugs played a big role in the Taboo scene. People were taking copious amounts of ecstasy, which had filtered over from New York, and at a certain point you were more likely to spend most of the night in the toilets at the club.

Drugs became an obsession, like Culture Club had been, like religion later became although I'm through with that now.

Leigh Bowery created outfits that made him look deformed, which was very brave. I believe this was the main thing that gave Leigh his edge. His designs were often breath-taking, but it was the way he used his body that was so utterly new and refreshing.