“My appetite for self-destruction and misery is greatly diminished. I’m not interested in being unhappy.”
― Boy George
“I’m of the opinion that as a DJ you must always play what you love and ignore what’s ‘trendy’ because true passion always eclipses what’s fashionable. Quality is always fashionable.”
― Boy George
“There’s no better time than now to be who you are.”
― Boy George
“I think there’s something really powerful about being yourself.”
― Boy George
“I’ve never felt as though I didn’t belong, I just acted as though I did.”
― Boy George
“I’ve never shied away from country. ‘Karma Chameleon’ verges on country. Reggae and country are very closely linked. If you go to Jamaica, you hear a lot of country music. There’s a correlation.”
― Boy George
“I always think that change is like a daisy chain.”
― Boy George
“The struggle isn’t just about being straight or gay or transgender – it’s a human struggle. That’s always really been my kind of starting point: If you’re out there and you’re odd, come over to my house.”
― Boy George
“If you go back to the ’80s, you had a whole plethora of artists, everyone from Madonna and Cyndi Lauper to Prince. God bless Lady Gaga for doing her thing, but she’s kind of a lone peacock now. If anything, we have a much more conservative kind of pop world. It’s not necessarily about individuality.”
― Boy George
“For artists of my caliber, we’re not played on the radio, so we don’t really get a chance to get involved in that debate at all. We don’t get a chance, because this weird kind of ageism exists in pop music. If you’re past a certain age, you’re not relevant. That’s the kind of cliched term.”
― Boy George
“I’ve had to write in a different way because I’m not in a bad place and I’m not heartbroken, so there’s no one I want revenge on.”
― Boy George
“I wanted people not to care about whether you were gay, straight, black, white, transgender, whatever it may be… That being said, there’s more work to be done… I still want to change the world, absolutely.”
― Boy George
“I started going to Madame Louise’s, the lesbian club where all the punk bands used to go – the Sex Pistols, the Clash. I remember seeing Billy Idol walk in there; he was gorgeous.”
― Boy George
“I’ve never been a bad person and always had quite good morals. There’s always been a side of me that’s been quite proper, but it’s got distracted here and there. Now I’m the person I should be.”
― Boy George
“When I was in prison, a lot of my friends blew me away. But Stephen Fry wrote to me. It was very humbling.”
― Boy George
“I just go in my back garden. It’s the only place where people don’t come and bother you.”
― Boy George
“I knew style and content went hand in hand.”
― Boy George
“I know that there are some people who don’t like me, and that kind of surprises me more than the people who love me.”
― Boy George
“When I was 19 or 20 and doing my thing, I can’t sit here and say I had this strong political agenda – I was literally just being myself.”
― Boy George
“Compliments are very un-British, but when someone pays you one, you should take it.”
― Boy George
“On the street, on the train – I pull my hat down, and nobody knows it’s me. I always wanted the kind of fame that came with an off button.”
― Boy George
“When I got sober, I really felt like there was something that was missing from my life, Buddhism is something that I practice.”
― Boy George
“There are lots of things about me that have changed. Some things are a process; some things take time.”
― Boy George
“I would rather have a cup of tea than sex.”
― Boy George
“I don’t want to be a figure of disappointment.”
― Boy George
“I can do anything. In GQ, I appeared as a man.”
― Boy George
“An actor is a guy who, if you ain’t talking about him, he ain’t listening.”
― Boy George
“Separation penetrates the disappearing person like a pigment and steeps him in gentle radiance.”
― Boy George
“A lot of people felt I was getting work because I was Boy George. My response at the time was that there’s a lot of DJs making records, they’re not all making good records, but they have the right to do that.”
― Boy George
“A lot of what I’ve been learning in the last two years is due to therapy – about my sexuality, why things go wrong, why relationships haven’t worked. It isn’t anything to do with anybody else; it’s to do with me.”
― Boy George
“Beethoven had a great look. It was very much about the drama of appearance.”
― Boy George
“I also tried to avoid doing obvious dance records.”
― Boy George
“I suppose there is a lot of toughness in me.”
― Boy George
“I think people could be a bit friendlier. The only real contact you have with people is when they’re annoyed if you’ve had a party – you know, it’s been a bit too noisy for them or something.”
― Boy George
“I try to exist in a world where there is freedom of opinion, where you’re allowed to make jokes. I don’t want to live in some PC world where no-one’s allowed to say anything.”
― Boy George
“I was unwelcome in the U.S. for four years.”
― Boy George
“I’d got very successful, everyone knew who I was, but I felt very empty.”
― Boy George
“I’m not responsible enough to have a dog – or a child.”
― Boy George
“I’m always being inspired .”
― Boy George
“I’m being honest, I say what I think.”
― Boy George
“My mother and father were fantastic, very active. I find it difficult to say this, but I’m quite a loving person and I’ve always been loving to my friends. In the long run, that pays off. I’m very interested in other people, and if you are, they’re interested in you.”
― Boy George
“Part of me looks at the gay movement now and worries that we’re losing our individuality.”
― Boy George
“People say things about me all the time and I get over it. I’ve had some appalling things told about me.”
― Boy George
“Remember that I was out of the closet at the age of sixteen. My parents knew I was gay; I’d had to tell them.”
― Boy George
“She’s probably in denial that she’s a great big ball of insecurity and I’m quite well aware that I am one.”
― Boy George
“The ultimate goal is to be more satisfied. I really don’t believe you get wiser because you get older. It’s a choice, perhaps not to take some things so seriously.”
― Boy George
“Very few people can truly divorce themselves from what they feel emotionally and sexually.”
― Boy George
“Well there are those who think you can only succeed at someone else’s expense.”
― Boy George
“What’s really sad is that a lot of very talented people are being forced to do things that are very embarrassing and I don’t intend to be one of them.”
― Boy George
“When Culture Club broke up, I hadn’t been going out a lot because we’d been working all the time, so I suddenly had this period of leisure. And it was just around the time that the whole acid house thing kicked off in London.”
― Boy George
“I don’t play big stadium-style dance, but I have discovered, to my delight, that the appetite for real low slung deep house is very much alive.”
― Boy George
“A difficult crowd will always test your true ability.”
― Boy George
“Seeing bored-looking fans staring at you while you DJ is about as horrible as it gets.”
― Boy George
“I’m a big fan of Yoko, one of those weird people who really love her music, and who argues with people all the time, because people do write her off.”
― Boy George
“My life hasn’t always been a disaster, it’s just that when it has, it’s been a spectacular disaster.”
― Boy George
“Sometimes you surprise yourself with what you can handle, and if you come out the other end with some wisdom, then it’s not such a bad thing.”
― Boy George
“I used to think of George Michael as being mechanical, like a scientist in a white coat, working in a laboratory, creating perfect harmonies, and all the while I was secretly admiring him.”
― Boy George
“I didn’t think anyone was going to buy ‘Do You Really Wanna Hurt Me?’ It was really personal, not a hit record, I thought. I wanted us to sound completely different. Shows how much I knew.”
― Boy George
“I never thought I’d be doing records a year after I started – I had no idea it would last as long as it did.”
― Boy George
“I don’t really feel part of the pop scene.”
― Boy George
“Luckily, I’m not one of those people who wants to be young; it’s never bothered me.”
― Boy George
“You get much more done if you go to bed early and get up early.”
― Boy George
“I’m much more interested in working and getting on with my music.”
― Boy George
“I always feel that my whole life is representing the LGBT community. It’s kind of what I do all the time.”
― Boy George
“To be here in America so soon after the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage and at the birth of the Caitlyn phenomena feels so timely. It feels perfect for my universe to collide with Caitlyn’s, but on a purely personal level, I just think she is utterly fabulous and brave.”
― Boy George
“Sly Stone made such a huge contribution to the good feeling in the universe, and I love him as a singer.”
― Boy George
“When you’re in the world I’m in, sometimes you have to remember that when you see your friends, you need to ask them what they’ve been doing, and you need to grow up and learn your life isn’t necessarily more interesting than other people’s.”
― Boy George
“I look back now, and most of the drama in my life was self-inflicted. I don’t need to make up so much drama now.”
― Boy George
“If you can write someone off as a bad person, then it’s easier, but when someone is also great and noble and generous and kind and funny and contradictory, it gets harder.”
― Boy George
“You don’t walk like other boys. You don’t talk like other boys. But at six, you are not thinking about your sexuality.”
― Boy George
“My coming of age was in the ’70s. A lot of people look back on it as a grim decade, but I look back on it as a liberating time.”
― Boy George
“Ziggy Stardust, the Village People, and punk rock really shaped who I am as a person and as a gay man.”
― Boy George
“As an outsider, you don’t think of Australia as being old-fashioned – it’s only when you’ve been here for a period of time when you realise there are issues.”
― Boy George
“There’s a guy in London named Ben Cohen who is doing great things. In a way, we need people like Ben – we need straight guys to come out and say, ‘What’re you worried about? Get over yourself.’ That’s what we need! Because no one’s listening to us – certainly, no one is listening to me.”
― Boy George
“When I put out ‘Same Thing In Reverse,’ I was told categorically that this will never get played in America.”
― Boy George
“In a way, we’re going backwards. In the early ’80s, it was like all these huge strides, and everything was more free and easy. I think we’re going back. I don’t know if it’s the economics or what, but things are getting more right-wing, definitely.”
― Boy George
“I look at myself at 19 and think I would never do what I did then now! I was so brazen, so confident, so fearless in a way. And remember, the world was a very aggressive place then.”
― Boy George
“I’m not in love, but I’m open to persuasion.”
― Boy George
“It’s funny that I’m so popular with seven-, eight-, nine-year-olds.”
― Boy George
“I try to find happiness in almost anything… watching videos about new exercises, like ones you can do on a flight when you clench your buttocks.”
― Boy George
“For some strange reason, my gay life didn’t get easier when I came out. Quite the opposite happened, really.”
― Boy George
“Adele is selling millions of records, and everybody tries to sing like Adele.”
― Boy George
“Bands like Culture Club and artists like me, you tend to concentrate on the live arena because that’s where you can be your most authentic. That’s where you have the most power.”
― Boy George
“I don’t listen to the radio, so I don’t really know what’s going on in current pop culture. I know about the obvious things, like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran and Adele, because I hear them. They’re everywhere.”
― Boy George
“I can be quite noisy and robust in the morning.”
― Boy George
“For someone like me, who has grown up with Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, it’s hard not to invest a lot of myself in what I do.”
― Boy George
“When you’re successful, people have no sympathy. Nobody wants to catch the tears of a millionaire.”
― Boy George
“I’ve sold a lot of records. I’ve sold, like, 150 million records, and I don’t think I’ve had that many good reviews. It’s one of those things that when you’re really successful, critics hate you just because you’re successful.”
― Boy George
“I’d rather they call me a national treasure than a national waste of time. And yes, it does feel good, but I’ve had to earn it.”
― Boy George
“I’ve got so much to be happy about.”
― Boy George
“Sometimes, having a reputation can be the best thing because people expect you to be really difficult, perhaps a bit caustic, and hard work – and I’m none of those things.”
― Boy George
“I think that’s the fascinating thing about the ’70s is that it turns out it was quite a dark decade. But, like, who knew?”
― Boy George
“To me, I think of the ’70s as being this glorious decade where I discovered who I was and discovered all these amazing things… punk rock, electro music, fashion, all of that.”
― Boy George
“I was always good at music.”
― Boy George
“I was never a wallflower – I put my head on the style chopping block.”
― Boy George
“At 16, I walked around knowing I’d get chased and attacked for dressing a certain way – I felt I had an undeniable right to be who I wanted to be. My father said to hit them back, but I was never much good at that. So I developed a big mouth instead of a quick right hook.”
― Boy George
“I forgive very easily, and I suppose, in the same way, I expect to be forgiven very easily as well. I grew up with that.”
― Boy George
“My dad was very explosive, God rest his soul. He could fly off the handle like no one I’ve ever known, and I have definitely got that in my personality: that ability to sort of smash the house up and then say, ‘Put the kettle on,’ to have that kind of attitude of, ‘Well, I’m OK now, so everybody else has got to be OK.’”
― Boy George
“I love American positivity.”
― Boy George
“You’re in a band with someone, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to agree with everything they think or do.”
― Boy George
“I used to tell my mum to leave my dad when I was, like, nine. I loved my father, don’t get me wrong. I really loved him, but he wasn’t a good dad, and he wasn’t a good husband.”
― Boy George
“My dad was quite an extreme man.”
― Boy George
“I knew that I was different when I was six years old, but it wasn’t until I got to about 10 or 11 that I realised I was a gay man.”
― Boy George
“People that plan interviews are really boring. I just say what I want when it comes into my head.”
― Boy George
“People in Scunthorpe don’t care what I say. And I’m not camp, either. I’m a geezer. I’m not a raving queer, I’ve got a bit of character. I just ignore people who shout at me in the street. I just stick my head in the air; I’m not interested.”
― Boy George
“I can’t even read music. All I know is whether I think it sounds good and if I like what I’m doing.”
― Boy George
“If you listen to the radio, and something beats you into surrender, like ‘REO Speedwagon’, and you really hate them, there’s ‘You Can Go Your Own Way’ in your ear all day, and that’s what makes a good song.”
― Boy George
“In the early part of the ’70s, we had glam rock, but we also had reggae and ska happening at the same time. I just took all those influences I had as a kid and threw them together, and somehow it works.”
― Boy George
“America has always been my biggest audience, so I’m putting a lot of faith in America.”
― Boy George
“I DJ’d and sang at Miami Basel 2013.”
― Boy George
“You have social networking, and you can do things efficiently without the might of a big label.”
― Boy George
“School is not a great place to have feminine features or a big nose, or to wear glasses or the wrong shoes.”
― Boy George
“School is a scary place for kids. So I didn’t like it, and I didn’t want to be there. And it was a great day for me when they threw me out.”
― Boy George
“Even from the age of about 6 years old, I was kind of made to feel different by other kids – you know, I was a quite pretty kid, and I got called ‘girl’ a lot, and ‘woman’ and all of that. And school is really not a place to be different.”
― Boy George
“I never really tell lies, and sometimes it has worked against me.”
― Boy George
“I always say I’m Catholic in my complications and Buddhist in my aspirations.”
― Boy George
“There’s always going to be something said that hurts you.”
― Boy George
“I had to go off to do my own thing, to get my confidence as a writer, and a performer.”
― Boy George
“I had an explosion on my vocal chord.”
― Boy George
“I’ve given up coffee, made diet changes.”
― Boy George
“I was sick. I had a polyp on my throat. It would have been foolish for me to go out on the road with the problem I had.”
― Boy George
“There are people you are madly in love with and thought you could never live without, and suddenly you break up and think, ‘What was I thinking?’.”
― Boy George
“I think life is about growing into yourself and getting to like that person.”
― Boy George
“I don’t know what the switch is from being insane to sane. It could be a number of things, what I eat, drink.”
― Boy George
“Lots of headless chickens running around – artists with 14 million followers on Twitter, some making millions, none making cultural impact.”
― Boy George
“Fans want more; they want you to perform in their living room. That’s the nature of the beast.”
― Boy George
“As for Madonna, I always used to laugh at her running. And now I run! I get why she always ran. I wish I’d run when she did.”
― Boy George
“In the morning, raw foodists don’t normally have breakfast. We have a lot of fluids. So I make all these different drinks which are quite strengthening.”
― Boy George
“I think what I love most about the raw food thing is it’s real alchemy. It’s a really interesting science, and I think for a creative person, it’s a great way to eat.”
― Boy George
“Before I got famous, I was like a rake. When I was a teenager, I lived on nervous energy. And I always forgot to eat. It was not something I was obsessed with. And then suddenly I got famous, people started taking me out to fancy joints. And the pounds pile on. So I’m much more conscious now about when I eat. How I eat. What I eat.”
― Boy George
“There’s ‘Erewhon’, a whole big super store where they do incredible raw vegan food.”
― Boy George
“I went to prison; therefore, I’ve been rehabilitated, and now I want to get on with my life. I have paid for what I did, end of story.”
― Boy George
“In a way, the most political thing you can do is be yourself.”
― Boy George
“I might be being controversial, but I think Seal fancies the pants off Delta, and her pants are tight.”
― Boy George
“People like my honesty. When I’m sane, I’m very much myself.”
― Boy George
“I was aware that the things that I did bothered people, but that only spurred me on even more.”
― Boy George
“I’m a much more successful and happier person sober. And I’m nicer to be around.”
― Boy George
“The more I dressed up, the more people reacted… the more I wanted to do it.”
― Boy George
“Unless you insult my mother or something, there is not much you could say to me that would really bother me.”
― Boy George
“I’ve grown up very much living my life very visibly. I’ve never really hidden who I am.”
― Boy George
“I get over things really quickly, and I feel like in this business, you have to be like that.”
― Boy George
“Let’s face it: I’ve got a bit of a reputation.”
― Boy George
“My audience here in America is so eclectic. It’s a real mix of people, which is great. Like what I was doing with Culture Club – world music, multiculturalism – not defining everything in terms of sexuality or color. It was about everyone coming together and being part of something.”
― Boy George
“I went back to DJ’ing in 1987, and it’s been an incredible second career for me. Plus, it’s almost a parallel universe. If you don’t go to underground clubs, you wouldn’t know what I do or who I am. So there’s been a whole new audience of people that don’t even know I’m that ‘Boy George’, the one their mother used to like.”
― Boy George
“I consider myself much more of a blues singer now.”
― Boy George
“I always judge my happiness by how much I listen to music.”
― Boy George
“I just eat healthy and try not to eat late at night. And I exercise as well. That’s a big change for me; I work out a lot.”
― Boy George
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