168 Image Quotes

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.

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

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Public postures have the configuration of private derangement.

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.

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...

Appearance rules the world.

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

So nice to be a fashion icon in my day.

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

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.

'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. '

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

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.'

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Especially in the beginning, they have to be able to label the product. So they just go -'Rebel. This one's a rebel.' Wow, I had no idea! There's that hideous pressure they hit you with initially, based on your image and how you look, and I never tended that garden. I was always scared shitless of that - it's really limiting and very dangerous. (2003)

For many years they said I was a wild man. Now they say I'm a former wild man, former bad boy, former rebel. I guess 'former' because now I'm a dad. The media tries to stuff you into a mold. It happens to everybody. (2004)

I could do a Bruce Willis thing and make a record now, but it would just milk my teen-boy, pop-idol image. I'd rather do nothing than do that. (1988)

I've never had paparazzi follow me and I rarely get recognised. I dress like a tramp when I'm not working. My hairdresser calls me the Romanian window cleaner. That's just the way I am.

Reputation is everything.

When you get the personality, you don't need the nudity.

Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them.

We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.

I have a saying. 'Never judge a book by its cover'. I say that because I don't even know who Ozzy is. I wake up a new person every day. But if you've got a fantasy of Ozzy, who am I to say? I mean, if you think I sleep upside-down in the rafters and fly around at night and bite people's throats out, then that's your thing. But I can tell you now, all I ever wanted was for people to come to my concerts and have a good time. I don't want anyone to harm themselves in any way, shape or form-and my intentions are good whether people want to believe it or not. I'm not going to suddenly become a Jesus freak or anything. But I do have my beliefs and my beliefs are certainly not satanic.

The idea of a band nowadays is 5 pretty boys, one with a tattoo, one with a shaved head, and on and on. What the fuck is that? I mean, I like Britney Spears, I think she's pretty, but I'm not from the Mickey Mouse Club-I'm from the Godzilla Club!

I've come to the conclusion that people don't want to know the truth-that I'm a happily married man with three kids that I absolutely adore, and that what I do is entertain people. I am not fucking Dracula.

The Placido Domingo of Australian politics.

I'd like to be a queen of people's hearts, in people's hearts, but I don't see myself being Queen of this country. I don't think many people will want me to be Queen.

A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.

Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

'If I can't defend even my hair(style), how can I defend Hong Kong?' -- Regina Ip responding to a radio talk show.

I'm not the last of the old bosses. I'm the first of the new leaders.

President Reagan brought us to the ultimate: America As Total Television. During his governance the printed word simply ceased to matter. White House dynamos had once telephoned newspapers to complain about unfair reporting. Not anymore. Now they telephoned network bosses. Even then it wasn't poor reporting they complained about, but poor pictures. A network reporter who thought her report on shortcomings in Reaganland would anger the President's cadres was amazed when the man in charge of propaganda thanked her for doing them a good turn. But, she said, that was a tough piece of reporting. Oh, the words may have been, said the gentleman, but on television words didn't matter. What mattered were pictures. And the pictures had been wonderful.

Everyone was muttering about Bill Clinton's philanderings before he came to visit, but once he walked into the room none of the women - or men - could get enough of him. He rather ignored me: my hair wasn't big enough.

'Greig, currently hot in the TV comedy Green Wing, has a dark, brittle glamour that isn't quite beauty (there's a disconcerting touch of Edwina Currie about her) and suggests an incipient unhappiness lurking beneath the ready wit.'

'I hadn't realised I enjoyed that reputation. But as I do, perhaps you could make it a large one.'

A second-rate actor, he turned out to be a crafty and avaricious politician, but without much substance; bereft of ideas he eagerly grasped and tried to improve upon the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

Many people hardly ever see a politician as a person anymore. Instead, a politician is a shadow they watch on television, not knowing whether he is speaking impromptu or reading a text written for him by anonymous advisers or experts from a screen hidden behind the cameras. Citizens no longer perceive their politician as a living human being, for they never have and will never see him that way. They see only his image, created for them by TV, radio and newspaper commentators.

He who is a legend in his own time is ruled by that legend. It may begin in absolute innocence. But, to cover up flaws and maintain the myth of Divine Power, one must employ desperate measures.

I hope nothing will occur that would create the possibility abroad of making atrocity propaganda out of these events.

Like the hat?

...the other day, I went to a chiropractor. He's just a regular chiropractor. Whenever I meet someone who doesn't know me, they say, 'Oh you're the guy who bites the heads off everything.' I get kind of cheesed off with it, but at least they remember. The thing that pisses me off is that that's not what I'm about. If that's what you think Ozzy Osbourne's about, then you're way off.

We were the Spice Boys.