All I can say is I’ve been lucky with my body. Well done, little body. I praise it and say, ‘You’re very good.’

I have to watch out for being lazy.

For some people, marriage may be very groovy. For me, it really isn’t. I don’t think it really is for most people anyway. Most people are not very happy.

There are so many myths out there about Marianne Faithfull, I had to, um, detach. But I can turn it on because Marianne Faithfull is really an attitude, you know.

My father belonged to a commune, and the food was ghastly. My idea of food hell is the salad cream they’d pour all over bits of lettuce, cucumber and tomato. It was just disgusting.

My story is really an affirmation of my strength and my luck. To live with a great artist like Ted Hughes or Mick Jagger is a very, very destructive role for a woman trying to...

I’d love to play a musician in a film.

When you are 18, 19, 20, you’re used to being photographed all the time, in a certain way. So, the narcissism becomes almost out of control. And the way that young women are photographed, they...

I love the Stones, but I’ve gone to a lot of gigs.

I get all dressed up with that Marianne Faithfull face, and the next thing I know, I’m blurting out things that I shouldn’t, trying to get attention when, really, I’ve got everybody’s attention already.

To be diagnosed with cancer was a frightening thing, and my first reaction was sheer panic, but I was really fortunate that the cancer was caught at such an early stage that I didn’t need...

I’ve got quite a good brain and all that, which I’ve never had to use in singing at all.

Sometimes you just have to get a shock to grow up and wake up, and I’ve had lots of shocks because it’s as though I don’t learn the lessons, so something new comes and hits...

I’m interested in time, fame, death, beauty, truth, all those things.

I took drugs because we all took drugs.

I once asked my father what he wanted me to be. To my horror, he said, ‘sociologist.’

I got my interest in Lotte Lenya and the Brecht-Weill canon from my parents. And I love classical music – I got that from my parents. I love Cole Porter – that I got from...

France has been very good for me. It has given me a very worldly-cool attitude.

I’m alive today, I’m well, I’m working, I’m still creative. What more can I say, really?

I focus on the individual and not seeing this great big monster, ‘the press.’

I’ve done everything I want to do and gone everywhere I want to go.

I shoot my big mouth off; it just pops up! I have to learn to edit myself.

I wish people didn’t just think of me in the ’60s. I’m not any era.

I never like photos of myself in the beginning. I live with them for three months, put them in a drawer, take them out and look again. I hate the way I look, but of...

I haven’t got purity, and I don’t think I ever did. I have always been, even as a child, a very decadent little person.

I am not frightened of much, but I wouldn’t like to get ill.

I do yoga. I do tai chi. I do a lot to keep my body and my spirit together so I can work.

I’ve learnt to accept what has happened to my voice, I suppose, but I do wish it didn’t sound quite so rough.

Rebellion is the only thing that keeps you alive!

I’m glad to say my father never felt ashamed of me, but my mother probably did.

I thought I wanted to go to drama school or university, and that would have been a completely different life. But what got me was the sound, and hearing it. Hearing everything so loud, I...

I’m a Capricorn, and they flower late.

I do have a strong sense of God. It’s impossible to explain what I mean when I say that, of course.

I’m sick of being self-referential. I don’t want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.

My happiness is very fragile.

I live a very nice life. I have a wonderful time. But it’s not lived drawing on a full level. I’m relaxed, cool, and enjoying it.

Of course I have regrets; I’m not stupid.

I’m not sure yet what my higher mission is, but I have a feeling it might be great. Before, I thought my mission was death, but now my mission is life.

I’m having a great life, and I want to go on having one.

I do take care of myself; I get my nails done, and I have a skin doctor, but that’s it. I’m clean and groomed.

I’ve simplified much more in my writing. I say what I’ve got to say, not in metaphor.

Penitentiary songs have been a love of mine for years. They are so wonderful.

The voice of God, if you must know, is Aretha Franklin’s.

The first opera I went to see was Maria Callas singing ‘Tosca’.

I’ve got to where I’ve always wanted to be. I just feel more myself, and I’ve learned not to care what other people think. It’s happened slowly, very slowly. But I did it.

I come from a very left wing Socialist family, anti-war and anti-empire.

I don’t talk about my private life.

The way I choose to show my feelings is through my songs.

Life has changed. People have changed. They are more forgiving, less inclined to rush to judgment. And I have changed.

Well, I really didn’t enjoy some of the movies I did when I was young.