Courtney Love Quotes

1. (on her music career with Hole) I said this band is going to be ten times bigger than Sonic Youth but not as big as Jane's Addiction. What was the but for?! It's like a fucking curse! The gods were listening that day! I could have said "this band will be ten times bigger than Sonic Youth and The Beatles" and that's where we'd be right now.


2. I did not want to make the widow record. I still haven't made the widow record.

3. You gotta be able to change worlds.

4. I like to mentor young women and encourage them to play music. It's like teaching someone to play a sport; it doesn't matter if they grow up to be a professional athlete. It is a skillset you can use for the rest of your life and it keeps people out of trouble. Every girl should know how to play three chords on a guitar; it should be mandatory. It will keep them out of trouble, and they'll get any guy they want (laughs).

5. I present myself as an archetype, as an incredibly strong, almost a dominatrix type. But my actual persona as a woman is really submissive - in terms of business, very submissive. So I'll rant and I'll rave and I'll moan and I'll write the fucking craziest emails, but when I'm facing that really, really smooth guy, it's really hard for me to say no. And I will keep looking for saviors and looking for saviors, but the truth is, there is no Daddy Warbucks. Nobody's gonna pull up in a limousine and say they're going to save you. That's not how it happens. You save yourself from drowning, that's how you do it.

6. I like to behave in an extremely normal, wholesome manner for the most part in my daily life. Even if mentally I'm consumed with sick visions of violence, terror, sex and death.

7. 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.

8. I don't need plastic in my body to validate me as a woman.

9. I might lie a lot but never in my lyrics.

10. Being offended is part of being in the real world.

11. On Sofia Coppola's 16th birthday, way back in 1987, I stole a lip gloss from her Sistine Chapel of a bedroom. Years later, I left a Chanel lip gloss in the reception of the Mercer Hotel for her. You know why? I believe that you've got to fix your karma.

12. I never expected I would be connected to the Alpha male as some kind of ancillary object, and to this day it mystifies me.


13. I wanted to be something when I grew up, and I grew up in the '70s. What was I gonna be, a movie star? Movie stars say other people's words. A writer - I'm undisciplined. A rock star - that's what I wanted to be when I was a kid.

14. I wore a dress that was so restricting and shoes that were five inches high, I could barely stage-dive, then I got the best write-ups, for being feminine, I guess. I couldn't move well and I was restrained, which equals great review. That's pretty horrid.

15. I'm driven. I am. I'm driven for some reason. But I don't know where I'm going.

16. I surrounded myself with women when I was growing up because I had this horrible psycho father. Now I'm trying to really appreciate and like men more.




17. But I always wound up being the damn John, when I wanted to be the Paul.

18. Part of what makes me good at my job is I was built physically for it. You've gotta be hearty. You've gotta be able to, like, stagedive and fight off big ass fuckin' guys. You've gotta be able to play topless and feel like a fuckin' amazon. That's what I love.

19. I think Andy Kaufman is to comedy what the Velvet Underground was to music - it's like, 80 thousand records sold, but everybody who bought one started a band.


20. Being a rock star is like being a cult leader - you really have to be in your own religion.

21. (on Russell Crowe) Russell is a really interesting and dark guy. Even just holding his hand I get shivers. He goes through hell. But I don't know if he's seen as many dead bodies as I have. 


22. See those marks on the door? On the wall. That's from where he (Kurt Cobain) was in here with guns and I kicked it in. Or tried to. It was too secure. He finally just unlocked it. And there were the guns, out. And I grabbed one. This was March 18. I grabbed the revolver and I put it to my head and I said: "I'm going to pull this right now. I cannot see you die. I can't see you die again." He grabbed my hand. He was screaming: "There's no safety! You don't understand, there's no safety on that! It's going to go off! It's going to go off!" So he got it from me. And I was seriously going to blow my head off right in front of him, cos I could not deal with it. 

23. I've never picked on harmless people. I've always picked on people i felt were corrupt or more corrupt than me.

24. I'll always prefer to play with women and hang out with women, and I'll always be a feminist.

25. I'm not going to apologize for offending you. Actually, I think you should thank me.

26. I don't mean to be a diva, but some days you wake up and you're Barbara Streisand.

27. I'm a survivor, at least that's what everyone tells me.

28. I built that album, "Celebrity Skin", as a monument. That important record where art and commerce are meeting, where discipline and restraint are meeting total organic truth. Like "Nevermind", like "Appetite For Destruction" like "Rumors" big, huge records with something to say.

29. I like all the angels around because they protect me and my daughter. I mean, her Dad's an angel.

30. I'm a catalogue artist: I compete with Bob Dylan.

31. I need reassurance just like everyone else.

32. What makes the most money for this business? Dead rock stars.





33. The language of love letters is the same as suicide notes.

34. I'm not going to hurt anybody other than that dick who keeps writing songs about me.

35. I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming.


36. I'm offended every time I see George Bush on TV!

37. My number one thing to work on is not being reactive - but appropriateness doesn't come easily to me sometimes.

38. This all-girl fantasy I've had my whole life, of you know…I'm going to show those Beatles, we're going to be huge! Well, it's not going to happen, right now, for my generation, for me. You know what I mean? Like, there are fucking riot grrrls sitting there banging on pots and pans and talking about their vaginas, and that's all really lovely, and like the writing is great, but the music blows. I mean you have to fucking sit in your room and practice. You have to fucking learn how to play guitar, you have to learn how to play bass, you have to learn how to fucking play drums. You have to go get Zeppelin one through four, and you have to fucking sit in a fucking little room off Hollywood Blvd. for two hundred dollars a fucking month, and you have to play those goddamn drums. And for whatever reason, women just haven't seemed to want to do that.

39. I'm clean and sober for over a year and no one seems to care! They're like: "Oh, her dramatic weight gain." So, stop making fun of me!


40. I used to do drugs, but don't tell anyone or it will ruin my image.

41. I'm ultimately a widow and a single mother, who's not even getting to be a mother right now. I am so alone, it's freaky.




42. Being famous is just like being in high school. But I'm not interested in being the cheerleader. I'm not interested in being Gwen Stefani. She's the cheerleader, and I'm out in the smoker shed.

43. When you hear a great song, it touches your life. It affects you, it's like a scent, it reminds you of something. You fuck to it, you feel blue to it, you feel great to it. 



44. If you want to ask about my drug problem, go ask my big, fat, smart, ten pound daughter, she'll answer any questions you have about it.

45. How can any woman be the female Jim Morrison? What Jim Morrison was was a sexual object. Women - we invented rock and roll, and sexualized men so that we could go and scream at these unattainable football captains.

46. He was so gorgeous…Kurt. I don't know how I got lucky that way.






47. It's a radical time for musicians, a really revolutionary time, and I believe revolutions like Napster are a lot more fun than cash, which by the way we don't have at major labels anyway, so we might as well get with it and get in the game.

48. Drugs have nothing to do with the creation of music. In fact, they are dumb and self indulgent. Kind of like sucking your thumb!

49. The only way Steve Albini would think I was a perfect girlfriend would be if I was from the East Coast, played the cello, had big tits and small hoop earrings, wore black turtlenecks, had all matching luggage, and never said a word.

50. Kurt had this dumb suicidal ideation - that's what I called it. I thought if we could live through this, we could live through anything.


51. I can turn on the radio right now and be inspired.

52. Movie stars are supposed to be healthy. They're kept happy and nutritionally together.

53. I like free gowns.

54. I've got to tell you: She's the biggest rock star I've ever been near. She asked me: "What are you doing for your country? What are you doing for your culture?" And I felt like an a- hole. She said: "If you want to fight for it, fight for it. And remember, you're gonna get the sh- beat out of you." So what’s new?

55. Only dumb people are happy.

56. I honestly can't answer that question, it's so ridiculous. The boys get all weird when you sell as many or more than they do. It's rare for a female who plays rock so they really want a piece of you one way or another - a piece of your ass, a piece of your history, a piece of immortality - by being one of your "helpers". They wanna fu##k you, and if you spend one night in a room they scream they wrote everything or they simply beg you to help them sell tickets and pull the plug when you're at your most vulnerable. I'm used to it, and I'm very flattered. I just wish I had a bigger sorority.

57. I'm not a woman. I'm a force of nature.


58. Much of my high-jinx have been drug-related. When you're under 30, whatever, but once you're past 40 it's just ugly.

59. I love being famous. I fucking enjoy it so much. Why do I have to explain that? Because no one else has it. Because it's a fight. Because its psychicly (sic, sic) charging. Hey. Because I get off on it.

60. In rock stardom there's an absolute economic upside to self-destruction.


61. My mentors are people like Cameron Crowe and Carrie Fisher.

62. You need to write on your own and produce your own life.

63. Me and Kat (Bjelland) were best friends for almost ten years and if we'd had been different sexes, I'd bet we'd have got married. Instead, we just fight over who's going to be a star.

64. The Kurt thing has burdened me so much.

65. Imagine this: you're peaking. You're in your youth. At the prime of your life. The last thing you want to be is a symbol for heroin use. You've finally met someone of the opposite sex you can finally write with. That's never happened in your life. The only other person you could ever write with wasn't as good a writer as you, and this person's a better writer than you. And you're in love, you have a best friend, you have a soul -fucking-mate, and you can't even believe it's happening in your lifetime. And as a bonus he's beautiful. And he's the best fuck that ever walked. And he wants to have babies, and what you want is babies. You've wanted to have babies forever. And he understands everything you say. And he completes your sentences. And he's lazy, but he is spiritual, and he's not embarrassed about praying, and he's not embarrassed about chanting, he's not embarrassed about God, Jesus, none of it. He fucking thinks it's really cool. He wants to fucking learn the path. He wants to be enlightened. Everything. And there's even room for you to fix him, which you like, cause you're a fixer. He's perfect in almost every fucking way. The only fucking happiness I ever had. And then it all gets taken away…

66. Being a rock widow is not my job, so I would hire people to do it for me.



67. Rock is all about writing your own script; it's all about pioneering.



68. But, you know, all good rock is easy.

69. You know, I think when I die, I'll pass an elevator shaft with all my grand gestures piled up, plus all my loose change, rubies, diamonds, hundred-dollar bills I've lost. When we die, all our stuff that's lost, it's all going to be there.

70. The only thing that's really riled me up in the last ten years has been the White Stripes. That's the one band that's gotten me competitive, and that's good.


71. I cannot exist as a solo artist.

72. There is no reason for me to have to lie about my demons, there's a young artist I know, at the very least she is bisexual, and she wanted to do a duet with me. I said: "YOU HAVE TO COME OUT," at least as a bisexual. And she wouldn't. I do not know why. There's a reason actresses lie about it or just don't comment on it, but I just don't see why a musical star or an executive has to do it. I've tried to come out but nobody believes I'm a lesbian - it's like I have "COCK" written on my forehead.

73. Given what I've been through? I'd rather fuckin' die than do drugs.

74. Since my persona is so demonized and so huge and so not what I'm about, I can practically do anything I want behind that persona, artistically. That's kind of a gift and a positive thing.




75. Grand gestures? Darling, I’m the queen of them.

76. Some of it was just being an impulsive, reckless woman, how many fugitives from justice do you know who are chicks? I'm a fugitive for life. It just adds to my wannabe-rebel status.

77. I've got catholic damage too.

78. I have many (self-destructive bones), and I've broken a bunch. I think self-destructiveness is given a really bad rap. I think that self-destructiveness can also mean self-reflection, can mean poetic sensibility, it can mean empathy, it can mean a hedonism and a libertarianism and a lack of judgement.


79. We went through ten years of the Limp Bizkit thing, and I didn't know what to do.

80. (her response to what she thinks she'll be like when she's old) Knowing me, I'd probably end up at a bar, asking some guy to get me another martini. Still bleaching my hair at 59.

81. But let me tell you something. Gloria Steinem never helped me out; Larry Flynt did.

82. Warren Beatty took an interest in my career at one point.

83. (on her father) He managed the Grateful Dead for five seconds, and he was an amateur acid-maker.

84. I am just the classic person who wants to learn stuff. I want good tutors, and with Kurt I had the best.


85. If you treat a girl like a dog, she's going to piss on you.


86. You're no one in the rock industry unless you've feuded with me or slept with Winona Ryder.

87. (what she told her daughter about drugs) Cocaine is like really evil coffee.

88. The boys can take off their shirts when they get hot, so why can't I?

89. If I write a song about being a teenage prostitute, that doesn't mean that I was a teenage prostitute, any more than it means Kurt raped Polly.

90. I have a brand and it's called "crazy bitch".

91. I've tried every drug there is, and that's one of the gnarliest ones. (cocaine) And you're completely psychotic.






92. Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth) sits me down and says: "If you marry him your life is not going to happen, it will destroy your life." But I said: "Whatever, I love him, and I want to be with him! It wasn't his fault. He wasn't trying to do that".


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