Selected image quotes

1. Public service is my motto.

2. The only thing Madonna will ever do like a virgin is give birth in a stable.

3. No man can be a genius in slapshoes and a flat hat.

4. Keep up appearances whatever you do.

5. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

6. We're pretty! We are though, we're a good-looking band.

7. My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks.

8. The image is one thing and the human being is another...it's very hard to live up to an image.

9. This is not a showman's job. I will not step out of character.

10. This Great God, Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till He shaped it in His own image.

11. I do think I go out of my way to be a very normal person and I just find it frustrating that people think that I'm some kind of weirdo reclusive that never comes out into the world. Y'know, I'm a very strong person and I think that's why actually I find it really infuriating when I read, 'She had a nervous breakdown' or 'She's not very mentally stable, just a weak, frail little creature'.

12. The extravagant and ostentatious lifestyles that pass for charisma in a time when almost anybody talks about charisma but if you think about it there's precious little to be seen.

13. What all this posturing and fake glamor results in is a vast detachment and cynicism on the part of the artists. Since it's impossible to have respect for an audience that'll take just about anything you care to dish out, and the impassive demeanor is so central to the role, a general numbnose is all that can be expected.

14. I'm not anything like Brad Pitt or Antonio Banderas, but maybe it's the taboo element of my image, which is almost deathlike, that attracts them. I should be the last person that [people] should be attracted to.

15. People ask me if I am going on making cheesecake pictures now that I'm a star. My answer is that as long as there is a boy in Korea who wants a pinup of me, I'll go on posing for them.

16. You're always a little disappointing in person because you can't be the edited essence of yourself.

17. I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.

18. I project a definite innocence. A lot of that is just the way I grew up.

19. When I was younger, I was worried about how others viewed me and if I was good enough. I realize now that you can't mold an image or try to be something that you are not. As far as being an actor is concerned, your work really speaks for itself.

20. A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.

21. In our small chess community in Marylebone it would be mock modesty on my part to deny that I have built up for myself a considerable name without ever actually having won a single game. Even the best players are sometimes beaten, and that is precisely what happens to me.

22. Public postures have the configuration of private derangement.

23. Fat girl, terrestrial, my summer, my night, How is it I find you in difference, see you there In a moving contour, a change not quite completed? You are familiar yet an aberration.

24. Everyone now, they look back and they're like, 'What happened to your sweet image that you used to be?' And I'm like, then when you came out you thought I was too provocative. It's like you can never win. No matter what you do, at the end of the day you can't please everybody, you know. I'm not here to please...

25. Appearance rules the world.

26. I don't like old people on a rock and roll stage. . . me included.

27. So nice to be a fashion icon in my day.

28. I want to be a diva, like 'people-totally-respect-my-music' diva, not diva like 'carry-my-diet-Coke-around'.

29. My life [is] a series of Hollywood orgies and Kabbalah center brunches with the cast of Friends. At least that's what my handlers tell me. I'm actually too valuable to live my own life and spend most of my days in a vegetable crisper to remain fake news anchor fresh.

30. 'I have to work hard to not look like a nerd all the time. My friends are the only people I know that don't care about my image. I need to have people who treat me just as Josh, not as Josh the singer. '

31. 'I would never know how to sell myself as a sex symbol. That's not how I'm programmed.'

32. The truth is, one can work for another ten years and be playing parts, pushing yourself as hard as you can, and you are still accused of that. You're still tainted with that brush. I'm not called Jude Law, I have three names; I'm called 'Hunk Jude Law' or 'Heartthrob Jude Law'. In England anyway, that's my full name. That's the cheap language that's thrown around, that sums you up in one little bracket. It doesn't look at your life. But if one looks beyond, there is actually a little bit more.'

33. The trend toward narcissistic flair has been responsible in large part for smiting rock with the superstar virus, which revolves around the substituting of attitudes and flamboyant trappings, into which the audience can project their fantasies, for the simple desire to make music, get loose, knock the folks out or get 'em up dancin.' It's not enough just to do those things anymore; what you must do instead if you want success on any large scale is figure a way of getting yourself associated in the audience's mind with their pieties and their sense of 'community,' i.e., ram it home that you're one of THEM; or, alternately, deck and bake yourself into an image configuration so blatant or outrageous that you become a culture myth.

34. I'm a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me - and that I've made of myself - as a sex symbol. They expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle, but my anatomy is the same as any other woman's and I can't live up to it.

35. Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

36. My face is so pretty, you don't see a scar, which proves I'm the king of the ring by far.

37. 'Me carrying a briefcase is like a hotdog wearing earrings.'

38. 'My only obligation is to keep myself and other people guessing.' [8]

39. I won't be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me.

40. There is nothing so stupid or dangerous or painful that people wont eagerly do it, if by doing it they will make others believe that they are better or stronger or more honorable. I've seen people poison themselves, destroy their children, abandon their mates, cut themselves off from the world, all so that others would think that they were a better sort of person.

41. I was just an enthusiastic mountaineer of modest abilities who was willing to work quite hard and had the necessary imagination and determination. I was just an average bloke; it was the media that transformed me into a heroic figure. And try as I did, there was no way to destroy my heroic image. But as I learned through the years, as long as you didn't believe all that rubbish about yourself, you wouldn't come to much harm.

42. This boy had everything. He had the looks, the moves, the manager, and the talent. And he didn't look like Mr. Ed like a lot of the rest of us did. In the way he looked, way he talked, way he acted - he really was different.

43. 'I wanted to look at Elvis the non-saint, as well as the nature of songs from the '50's, all that postwar optimism; he's iconic, a wonderful singer with an amazing body of work, but he's a bit like Billie Holiday, you're not 'allowed' to be critical'

44. Few of those who stood on the defendants' dock at the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945 to 1946 inspired more revulsion than Ernst Kaltenbrunner. ...This tall, hulking, scarfaced lawyer joined the National Socialist German Worker's Party (NSDAP) in 1930 and the elite Schutzstaffel, in 1931. ...Author Evelyn Waugh noted in his diary that 'only Kaltenbrunner looked an obvious criminal.'

45. There was the tiger, for instance. That was Kaltenbrunner, the terrible successor to Heydrich, the man of burning hate, the man with the sharp lawyer's brain. Of the quartet, Ernst Kaltenbrunner will haunt our memories the longest. He was the perfect Hollywood Nazi, lean-faced, cold-eyed, harsh-voiced, always under perfect control. A stubborn man and a strong man. As he sat there before us in the interrogation room in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, we were fascinated by the deliberate way in which he clamped his lower lip over his upper lip as if to make sure that no word should escape him except when he wished to speak.

46. I'm sure that Kaltenbrunner would not misuse the SD or Gestapo as Himmler and Heydrich did. Kaltenbrunner loves women and wine. He does not like police activity any more than I do.

47. Yes, Peter. Are you going to ask that question with shades on?... I'm interested in the shade look, seriously.... For the viewers, there's no sun.

48. Darling, you look like a religious icon there [in her high school graduation picture].

49. When people meet me, they are surprised at how sick and warped I am.

50. To look upon her was more beautiful than anything; her splendor and her form were divine; she was a maiden, beautiful and blooming.

51. There were times at the theater when one or another of the young actors would make a pass, but invariably they reconsidered, deciding I was too 'sweet.' I was cursed with innocence.

52. Being a well-dressed man is a career, and he who goes in for it has no time for anything else.

53. When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs.

54. Let the skeptics snort about Camelot, but there was something during the Kennedy years that was magic. Jackie was more of that than anyone admitted for a long while. She smoothed the rough Kennedy edges. As much as anyone in those heady days, she grasped the epic dimensions of the adventure. No small portion of the glamour of the Kennedy stewardship that lives on today came from her standards of public propriety and majesty.

55. Jade:'Holy shit, that looks frightening and intruiging and amazing and delicious. Look at the poor lonely corn dog....'

56. I guess I'm the world's first hippie pinup girl.

57. For us, things like make-up are just for the stage. I'm not sitting here right now at the interview wearing lipstick or something, or eyeliner, or you know, or a bra for that matter.

58. Everybody out there who calls us spoiled because we play 'a game', they can kiss my ass. They can all kiss my ass.

59. Having been a villain in wrestling, my relationship with the media has always been rocky. They don't view wrestling for what it really is, entertainment.

60. My whole life I've played the role of the blonde. It's always worked for me. It's a good thing...but it can also be a bad thing if you get labeled as the 'blonde' all the time.

61. I think I was just fed up with the image that had been created around me, which I sometimes consciously, most of the time unconsciously cooperated with. It just got too much for me to really stomach and so I put an end to it one glorious evening.

62. I think that more than writing and music, my greatest talent is that I have an instinctive knack of self-image propagation. I was very good at manipulating publicity with a few little phrases like 'erotic politicians'. Having grown up with TV and mass magazines, I knew instinctively what people would catch on to, so I dropped those little jewels here and there, seemingly very innocently; of course, I was just calling signals.

63. I wish I was covered in fur... or feathers... or something more interesting than just fat.

64. The people you don't actually know and who don't know you...when you turn up, and of course they're expecting you to look like one of Echo & The Bunnymen or something like that, and when you turn up looking like Echo & The Bunnymen's dad who hasn't been well for very many years, one can almost sense... the disappointment is almost tangible you know, which is why I tend to lurk here in the studios and not venture forth. It's like the 'Elephant Man' you know, bag over the head, that kind of stuff.

65. He (the Emperor) is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.

66. 'Wir durfen eine gute Sache nicht am falschen Schein ruinieren.' ('We must not ruin a good thing with a bad appearance')

67. 'He's the most beautiful man who ever walked the earth ...' - Naomi Watts (People magazine, November 24, 2004)

68. 'Jude's uniqueness is that he has the talent of a character actor and the looks of a leading man.' - John Avnet (People magazine, November 24, 2004)

69. 'Jude Law is one of the most handsome men on the planet. He is a character actor struggling to get out of a beautiful body.' - Anthony Minghella [6]

70. Have you ever seen a picture Of Jesus laughing? Mmm, do you think He had a beautiful smile? A smile that healed.

71. There was a story that some EMI execs had come down to see you and you'd said something like: 'Here's what I've been working on,' and then produced some cakes from your oven. True? 'No! I don't know where that came from. I thought that was quite funny actually. It presents me as this homely creature, which is all right, isn't it?'

72. Somewhere in the trash he reads Martland has read that heavy men walk with surprising lightness and grace; as a result he trips about like a portly elf hoping to be picked up by a leprechaun.

73. It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor.

74. The Prime Minister, shortly after she came into office, received the sobriquet as the 'Iron Lady'. It arose in the context of remarks which she made about defence against the Soviet Union and its allies; but there was no reason to suppose that the right hon. Lady did not welcome and, indeed, take pride in that description. In the next week or two in this House, the nation and the right hon. Lady herself will learn of what metal she is made.

75. [She has a] patronising elocution voice [and] neat well-groomed clothes and hair, packaged together in a way that's not exactly vulgar, just low. [It fills me with] a kind of rage.

76. I remember her on the screen, huge as a colossus doll, mincing and whispering and simply hoping her way into total vulnerability.

77. Rene Levesque looks like a distressed seminarian.

78. It's Wheird, there's an H in there. Gotta hit that H otherwise they think I'm some sort of a kook!

79. Le ridicule qu'on a augmente toujours en proportion qu'on s'en defend.

80. I think they just thought she would be a good kind of lightning rod. We did one or two rehearsals, and I know for a fact that people liked her legs.

81. When I did that Metallic stuff for my Umbrella video, I didn't do it to show my body. I didn't do it for people to like me. I did it because it was a cool visual, unexpected and I looked hot. I just find myself leaning towards stuff that only Madonna can pull off.

82. The crimes committed here foul the name and holiness of Jesus Christ in the eyes of the Iranian people.

83. Embrace your inner wacko, Senator Kerry.

84. A harmless, lovable little fuzz ball.

85. If you close your eyes, you could just as well imagine me to be vintage Ali MacGraw, circa 1968.

86. Victor: White people won't respect you if you don't look mean. You have to look like a warrior, like you just got back from killing a buffalo. Thomas: But our tribe never hunted buffalo. We were fishermen. Victor: What, you want to look like you just caught a fish? This isn't Dances with Salmon, you know!

87. Too fat, too thin, what the fuck are you supposed to be? God bless the media!

88. Seem'd washing his hands with invisible soap In imperceptible water.

89. Create myself down south. Impress all the women. Pretend I'm Samuel Clemens. Wear seersucker and white linens.

90. And on the wolfmother wallpaper, little beads of dew.

91. Dont get it twisted this is not my real life, this is not how my real life is suppose to be.

92. A lot of people wanna be W.C. Fields now, but that's not even who I am.

93. I'm not really an exhibitionist. I'm drawn to the outrageous stuff because it's fun, not because it's some deep compulsion. I'm not tortured, anger-stoked, deeply neurotic comic -- just a pretty low-key normal guy. A 'hey, the glass is half-full' kind of a guy. But please keep it quiet, or I may never work again.

94. 'Well, a not of times we are looking for a signt that tells us we're godly. We want to preach, or be a missionary or whatever, all to help ouselves believe that God is using us. We look everywhere but to God to make us feel godly. We try to convince others we are godly so that we can convince ourselves we are godly. The botton line is that godliness is about relationship, not about image'

95. I realized in and instant that I desired false gods because Jesus wouldn't jump through my hoops, and I realized that, like Tony, my faith was about image and ego, not about practicing spirituality.

96. I had the image of a spiritual person, but I was bowing down to the idols of religiosity and philosophy.

97. 'We never used sex to enhance our image.' (During the WWF 1999 commercial)

98. History!... Everybody kept saying to me to put a cold towel around my head and wipe the blood off... later, I saw myself in the mirror; my whole face spattered with blood and hair... I wiped it off with Kleenex... History! ... I thought, no one really wants me there. Then one second later I thought, why did I wash the blood off? I should have left it there, let them see what they've done... If I'd just had the blood and caked hair when they took the picture ... Then later I said to Bobby- what's the line between history and drama? I should have kept the blood on.

99. my own momma say im thugged out/my shit be bumpin out tha record store/as if it was a drug house/my lyrics bang like a Crip or Blood

100. This is Winston Churchill speaking. If you have a microphone in my room it is a waste of time. I do not talk in my sleep