Quotes by Marina and the Diamonds

If you don't want to have your private life splashed everywhere, why go to the restaurants and the places you know you're going to be photographed?

I felt connected with Madonna from a very young age. I think I share a lot of qualities from her personality. I really respect her.

Rejection is a universally embarrassing topic and 'Electra Heart' is my response to that. It is a frank album.

I feel weird without lipstick. Even after the first time I wore a really neon pink or a really bright red, I felt really strange without it there. My lips are a main feature, so I feel naked without them.

Success, I've come to realise, is fleeting so you shouldn't value it too much.

I'm vulnerable, I'm vulnerable. I am not a robot.

I have quite a lot of plastic sunglasses. It's just a nice accessory, it adds a final thing, and it's my favorite way of figuring an outfit.

I want blood, guts, and chocolate cake.

I quite like dark humor.

I think each human being wants to make their mark on the world in whatever way they can, and maybe everyone has a slight egomaniac inside of them.

You could say that my life's a mess. But, I'm still looking pretty in this dress.

My biggest fear is love and getting hurt in love but still believing.

Sometimes you feel amazing about life and other times you just feel fat and depressed, so I think it's good to be honest about that and to make light of it, I think humour is important, nobody's perfect.

Fake it, fake your confidence until it's real. I think it's a good way to live most of your life.

Trends in culture all serve a purpose and that's always indicative in fashion and music, you can always tell what's going on culturally in the mindset of the young generation if you look at those mediums.

I feel like artists that are always quite sad in real life always make really happy music, and artists who are really bouncy and bubbly always make really sad music.

I don't think I'm an instantaneous act the whole world will love in one second -- but that's how I've felt about bands I love.

My style icons are Leigh Lezark, Gwen Stefani and Shirley Manson.

Touring can be tough; the crew and I travel everywhere by a big pink bus, and live in petrol stations.

I really like the look of the 1950s, lots of suburban Americana influences. I'm 5'4', so I like kitten heels occasionally because I can move around a bit easier, but pointy-toed pumps are very elongating.

People are complex, and I think it's a huge element of what I do, because you have to balance out the fact that you talk about quite serious things with a sense of irony and tongue-in-cheek humor. That's my personality as well.

I'm interested in how identity is transient. How do we know who we really are, when different situations and environments dictate how we behave? I'm interested in the role we all play. We spend our whole lives becoming ourselves when we are born as no one else.

I often take things I find in vintage crawls and hand them to a very good seamstress, who then replicates them and makes a more robust version in different colors, with a pocket for my mic pack.

Lots of narcissistic people have helped lots of other people with their music. That's such a narcissistic thing to say! Ha ha!

If you don't want to have your private life splashed everywhere, why go to the restaurants and the places you know you're going to be photographed?

Blonde symbolises sexuality and power -- it holds very different connotations. The archetypal star has always been blonde.

I am very curvy, so the vintage stores suit me better than most designers. I just can't seem to give up crisps, or make my boobs shrink for that matter. Alas, I will never fit a size zero.

Britney Spears is a big influence. Huge. I think people thought I was joking about that for a long time. But when I was a teenager, there was a genuine connection with this sweet girl who also had this very sexual side that people didn't really want to accept.

Everybody is different. Some people like to share more. I just wouldn't want to spoil someone's opinion of me by them knowing me as a person instead of an artist.

I love pop music because you can really see what's currently happening in society.

I thought for a long time that I was going to be a pop artist. It was around 18-19 that I started to make that a reality. I just knew that this was my destiny.

This obsession with celebrity culture is really unhealthy. I don't want to live my life like that, and I don't want to be a typical pop star.

I'm not really part of that 'L.A. thing' or that celebrity culture. I'm more like someone who observes it, and I can't ever imagine being like that.

I've always been interested in how fast-moving our identity is and that I've never been able to pin down who I truly am. That inspires me to write, because I feel like that cements me a bit, in that I find my identity in being an artist.

What I hate is that not many people admit to having a big ego, but you have to -- and there's nothing wrong with it.

I consider myself a feminist because I believe women should have equal rights. Of course. It's just that the term 'feminism' conjures up other things for people.

You have to be your biggest believer.

Even when I see a beautiful woman, I think, 'Aw, her life must be amazing.' Everyone does it. That's human nature to believe that beauty is everything.

Obviously when you're a teen you have no money, so you make, like, three outfits out of one dress. You're like, 'OK cut the arms here. Alright: New party, cut them to here.'

That's when you know you really fit with someone -- when you can just sit there and not do anything. Kind of ignoring each other.

If you're making too many excuses for someone, agonising over them in a way which takes up all your waking thoughts and feel so nervous around them you could be sick, then they are probably the wrong person.

When you are with the wrong person, who doesn't really love you, all you want is to be adored. It makes you more inward and needy. Gross.

I love natural beauty, and I think it's your best look, but I think makeup as an artist is so transformative.

Everyone gets dumped and everyone gets hurt and there's karma to love in regards to what you've done to other people.

Love is really my nemesis. I never really allowed myself to indulge in such basic things because I was so motivated and thought that if I did I wouldn't succeed.

I do have a memo all the time because I need to be guided by something in my life. I'm not religious and I don't have idols, so something has to drive me.

Actually, I think that a lot of the interviews and acoustic sessions and other things that artists fill their time with are really pointless and suck the energy out of the artist.

Hollywood infected my brain and I really valued the wrong things in life, but I changed dramatically.

I don't just want to sing about simplistic things all the time. It's good to have a mix of songs that have a real depth, and that provoke and challenge people, and then songs that are fun and people can enjoy.

I'm not going to lie; I'm not a huge remix person.

I actually quite like promo, which is quite odd for an artist, but recording's not the easiest thing.

I hate the whole 'record your album, do your promo campaign, have a year off to write another album' pattern. As an artist, you should keep creating as much as you possibly can.

I think celebrity culture and sexuality in pop music is really important, but I want there to be an alternative for people.

I think some people just have an innate musical ability, and I'm lucky enough to be one of those people.

You know what, if you compromise and do stuff that's not becoming to you as an artist, that's your fault.

There's no one particular road that will lead you to success. I think everybody will find it differently.

I've read every Madonna biography. I've also looked up every pop star to see how they first made it. The biggest thing I learnt was that you have to be pro-active. You can't be scared.

Nobody will admit to playing power games in relationships, but they do.

Music is my 90% of my life and my biggest passion. I really don't have an interest in anything else.

I'm masquerading as an innocent pop star.

I want to provoke people with thoughts, not by taking my clothes off. It's time to move on from Stripperville.

I turned off my Google alerts in 2009 as I learnt that following yourself on the Internet very quickly becomes unhealthy.

I'm a very, very disciplined person.

I'm just waiting for the moment where it's accepted that women are just as sexual as men without women having to be overtly sexy just to prove how 'liberated' they are.

I didn't even listen to any music until I was 19, really. I just wanted to be famous. But I didn't say it to anyone because I was really embarrassed at the thought.

My dad's quite a conservative person, and he brought me up to be very questioning of the commercial world. He looked down on pop culture. I definitely got the impression that pop was evil and that Britney Spears was evil.

I am absolutely not a roll-on-stage kind of girl! I would be totally freaked out if I didn't warm up, and I don't know how other singers do it.

There's nothing I'd never wear, really. I've worn pink spotty pajamas from a Goodwill store onstage before. This only happens when I'm having a small breakdown!