Quotes by Beth Ditto

"I've never had a very quiet voice. I tried in choir to make it smaller, and it just didn't work out. And I listened to a lot of soul music when I was growing up on my own accord. But I was mostly into Mama Cass and Gladys Knight, and they all had big voices too just different than mine."

"It's really hard for me to sometimes put myself out there, like 'Hey, how do you feel about making music together?' because maybe I'm afraid of rejection or I don't want to put anybody out. It's the Southerner in me, like, 'I don't mean to bother you but do you mind making a song?'"

"I love sad songs. They say so much. I love country music but even the happy songs sound really sad."

"I'm constantly thinking about what I'll do next. I never count on music being a career of longevity. I mean, longevity is key, and I hope that it lasts, but you just don't know, because it's not in your hands, you don't make the decision."

"I feel sorry... for people who've had skinny privilege and then have it taken away from them. I have had a lifetime to adjust to seeing how people treat women who aren't their idea of beautiful and therefore aren't their idea of useful, and I had to find ways to become useful to myself."

"For me the greatest revenge of all is having a happy adulthood, waking up in my gorgeous turquoise bedroom in the morning beside a person who really inspires me. That's the best revenge a girl-loving girl from the Bible belt could possibly have. And, importantly, it's healthy."

"Thanks to capitalism, the importance placed on beauty has never been so manipulated. We are the guinea pigs force-fed ads that tell us how pathetic we are: that we will never be loved, happy or valuable unless we have the body, the face, the hair, even the personality that will apparently be ours, if only we buy their products."

"We all seek approval, and our mother's seal is usually the most important. The nitty gritty is that we have to accept ourselves, even if it is just to be ready for the next cut-down. Mom's blessing or not."

"When I am made fun of in the press I just remember those days when I'd come home to find that the water had been turned off because my mother couldn't afford the bill. Suddenly, everything feels easier."

"My mother told me Homer Ditto was not my father. Nope. Mom had had a fling with some other guy who was my dad. Some dude who didn't stick around too long who Mom was happy to get rid of. She chose Homer, and Homer chose me, so he lent me his name even though I didn't have his blood."

"Aretha Franklin was a teenage mom, a musician who came from an incredibly Christian background, but there was a lot of love, which is really inspiring in a feminist way."

"I was born to be married. I just feel comfortable there. I love the idea of being partnered for ever. I love my girlfriend, we've been best friends since I was 18. There's not a thing we haven't been through except for marriage... We've had talks about what we would name our kids since we were in our 20s."

"I thought to be feminine was to give in to straight culture, or the beauty standard, but in my heart I had a flair for fashion and style. They were passions I kept secret because I didn't understand I could love clothes and hair and makeup and still like girls."

"Olympia was a town crawling with music. I was new to the whole punk scene. The culture shock continued Olympia had bagels! We didn't have bagels in Arkansas. You could order vegetarian food all over town! It was so crazy to me - a place with so many vegetarians, the restaurants made special dishes for them?"

"Girls are taught to sing high and pretty, like Antony, not low and from the guts like Nina Simone. But we're slowly trying to change that. There are so many things we're not told growing up, and it's our true feminist responsibility to take the truth to the people who need to hear it."

"Reclaiming the word 'fat' was the most empowering step in my progress. I stopped using it for insult or degradation and instead replaced it with truth, because the truth is that I am fat, and that's ok. So now when someone calls me fat, I agree, whereas before I would get embarrassed and emotional."

"I don't feel famous and I didn't want my autobiography to be like a Paris Hilton story."

"My dad liked to boil a squirrel head and suck the brains out the nose. Smaller than a chicken, bigger than a rat."

"For my group of friends is Lady Gaga eye-opening? No. She's a less dangerous version of what was so cool about pop culture in the '80s. Back then it was so gay and so punk in so many ways."

"When you see a fantastic colour or cut in a magazine, perched up on some famous so-and-so's head, it's tempting to ask your stylist for the same, but do not be fooled. The hair in those fancy photos can be very high maintenance."

"I have no control over what people think of me but I have 100% control of what I think of myself, and that is so important. And not just about your body, but so many ways of confidence. You're constantly learning how to be confident, aren't you?"

"All this fashion stuff - who's cool now - is just a bigger version of the cool kids versus the nerds."

"Do I ever think Gossip will be really massive in America? No, I don't think it'll happen - and that's fine. It's kind of nice because I get to experience everything at once. I get to come home and it not be weird, like in Paris or something. It is nice to be completely anonymous."

"Starting out really punk came from not knowing any better and listening to music like that, not knowing how to play music - well, still not knowing how to play music."

"As with most phobias, the fear of flying does make some sense, but if ever there was a fear worth quashing then this is it. After all, life is short, and there's a great big world to explore out there."

"As a kid, I was always mad - just noticing the women at Thanksgiving, running around the kitchen, while the men were watching football. For one, I don't want to cook, and for two, I hate football. I was stuck in the middle."

"When I moved out of my mom's house at 18 I was almost as sad to leave her sewing machine behind as anything else."

"I just like food too much, and I don't want to change. I spent so much of childhood trying to change, and I just got sick of it... I don't want to look like Britney Spears, I just don't want to. She's hideous."

"When I was a teenager I would lock myself in the bathroom for hours, bouffanting my hair like Patty Duke and trying to recreate Barbra Streisand's flawless eyeliner, only to comb it all out and wash it all off before stepping out into the world a butchish bisexual teen."

"My size has helped make me an amazing performer too. The cliche of the Funny Fat Friend: I absolutely was that character - I am that character... It's a complicated bag of tools I acquired, and I've put them all to work onstage."

"I was brought up by a single mom in a poor town in Arkansas and while some aspects of small-town life were really positive - like the fact that everyone there is really sweet and hospitable - there is also this close-minded mentality, and that naturally made me want to rebel."

"I think it's really cool that there are people like Adele on the cover of 'Vogue' and 'Rolling Stone,' and like I think it's really important that people are talking about your body, because if they don't, then you'll never be able to break that barrier."

"I've had people ask me in interviews what it's like to have money, but that's not how it is. I have a middle-class life. I have a room in London but not a house, nor a BMW."

"'Get a Job' is about all the rich kids we knew when we were younger, kids who never had jobs but always had money for partying or getting their hair done."

"You live in this shadow that you're going to burn in Hell until you're saved. And I still worry about it a little. I don't believe in Heaven, but I do still fear Hell."

"A few years back, when my style was 'punk grandma,' I picked up an amazing pair of sandals - orthopaedic ones, with really thick soles. I've given them away to a friend now, because these days my look is more '1980s substitute teacher gone wild.'"

"I was given baby doll toys myself, and they proved a stark reminder that my life was expected to revolve around childbearing - just as my mom's had before me, and her mom's had before her."

"Here is my prescription to heal all wounds. Watch the film 'Funny Girl' at least five times, eat at least 45 chocolate bars, and hang out with all those friends you blew off to hang out with your ex. I truly believe that, through a combination of Nutella, old pals and Barbra Streisand, we can achieve happiness and, very probably, world peace."