Shirley Manson

I am not a sexy woman, I'm not beautiful, I'm not a sex kitten, I don't flirt with people, yet I've been tagged more of sex symbol than women who truly are and I that's solely because I don't reveal too much: people are curious.

Possibly because I grew up not feeling very confident about my own physical appearance, I developed internal devices so that I could integrate into society.

My solo album is dead and buried. We had the funeral. It was sad and I cried a lot but it made such a beautiful corpse that we had an open casket.

I refuse to step inside the ring and fight like a gladiator against my own. I'm not playing that game. Any woman who has survived a year or more of making music has my undying respect.

A lot of people these days are not music lovers - they just want to be famous which is a very different thing to what I grew up believing in.

I have a lot of very close girlfriends and sisters - I'm from an all female family. My father often quips that even the cat was neutered!

I was always embarrassed because my dad wore a suit and my mother wore flat pumps and a cozy jumper while my friends' parents were punks or hippies.

You have to watch all sides of your advancement, you have to make sure people's bodies and minds are healthy and their morale is cool before you can really go out and play great music.

I am a contradictory mess but I see it as my prerogative to change my mood like the weather.

And then there's all these other creeps that surround your band and suck off you like leeches and try to manipulate you and your business. You have to watch like a hawk. I'm always ready to fight. I see it very much as a battle.

People don't associate red hair, pale skin, and freckles with beauty.