Quotes by "Viv Albertine"

At last there is an unknown element back in my life. This is how it used to be. This is how I used to do things before the eighties and jobs and money and careers and Thatcher and marriage and mortgages. I was spontaneous, free, even reckless. Things often didn’t work out, but I felt alive. Painfully alive. For the last few years I’ve been feeling painfully dead. That drive, that lust for life that everyone expects you to have after surviving cancer, well it took ten years to arrive, but here it is. I don’t care what anyone thinks of me any more, I’m going to live life to the full, starting with New York.

I can't imagine what a happy home is like: parents cuddling and laughing, music playing, books on the shelves, discussions round the table? We don’t have any of that, but if Mum’s happy, I’m happy.

I secretly do a pregnancy test every day. It’s always negative. I just want to be sure, seeing as this is the last try. I’m going to do a pregnancy test every single day until my period comes. If I’m still doing tests, I’ve still got something to live for. Still got hope. But it’s the hope that kills you. Every day I torture myself looking at the little window on the white tester stick, waiting and waiting. No blue line.

I'm glad I didn't know how my life was going to turn out when I was that child lying in bed staring at the curtains. I'd have been terrified of the good things that happened just as much as the bad.

I work hard, I never miss a lecture. I try and overachieve, like all mature students. People given a second chance know the value of their reprieve.

I'd like to be with someone kind who can hold a conversation and is in my age group. If that's too much to ask, I'll do without.

I can always go back to Jane Austen. 'Mansfield Park' is full of wise aphorisms and relevant observations of people.

I can't stand these autobiographies that start with, you know, 'I was born in Acton, and I went to such and such a school.' They just bore me.

I do read a lot of autobiographies and biographies but from people who are not in my field - older women, older artists, Miles Davis.

One of my faults is a big mouth. I tend to say the wrong thing without meaning to.

I always felt very free about experimenting with clothes. I was into clothes in a big way from a young age. Not expensive but fun and experimental.

I read a lot when I was young. All the obvious, all the greats, from 'Le Grand Meaulnes,' 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' 'Fear and Loathing,' 'Catcher in the Rye,' 'The Bell Jar,' 'The Female Eunuch,' 'Valley of the Dolls,' 'The Feminine Mystique,' Tom Wolfe. Then, film took over for me. Film was so exciting in the '70s.

I could be completely mad and sound like David Icke, but I just find people with blue eyes colder, less passionate, and more calculated people.

The older I get, the more the lying, the losing touch with your true thoughts and feelings, and the compromises required to fit in seem not worth the effort. It's my one go on Earth; why spend any more of it conforming to other people's rules and ideals?

I get the same lurching thrill now when I'm about to sit down to an egg mayonnaise sandwich and a packet of plain crisps as I used to get when I fancied someone.

Most female artists - to do what you have to do and to be as honest as you have to be, to be as selfish as you have to be, as tunnel-visioned as you have to be to make art, not entertainment - you can't compromise, really.

The truth is the only thing that will move society forwards.

It's the people who transcend their backgrounds who are interesting to me. I have got a bit of inverted snobbery.

It's all very well for the Kinks and Damon Albarn to sing those songs and sneer at Mr. Nine to Five, but again, they're white men, so they didn't have it very hard.

I usually write at my kitchen table, nothing exotic. I don't need any equipment. I don't have to organise anyone else to rehearse, and when I do a reading, lots of women and girls come, whereas gigs are dominated by men. Not against men, but I want to communicate to women.