Marilyn Manson

Fear is something I instill in other people, mostly young girls.

To me, Satan ultimately represents rebellion.

We live in a society of victimization, where people are much more comfortable being victimized than actually standing up for themselves.

If you lose who you are, what do you have?

I don't need to drive. I have no business driving. I would never be able to find my keys.

Living in Hollywood, it's easy to have someone flatter you. That doesn't help me.

If you're gonna pretend to be something, then you have to at least live up to what it is.

Don't ever empty the bucket of mystery. Never let people define what you do. It's not about zigging when you should zag. It's not about doing something unprecedented and unpredictable. It's just about never being a word, or something that is not in the process of transformation.

My art is not limited to the songs I create but also to the reaction it creates. I like to sit back and look at the whole thing as if it's a tornado that I'm controlling. It's creating chaos. When you create chaos, ideas are turned upside down, and everybody looks at things in a different way.

I care about the people I know and love the most, but I also care about what the people I don't know think in the sense that I want them to think and understand me in a certain way. I don't base my life around either one, and I don't change the way I live to please either set of people, but I do care.

Yes, I'm reckless and sometime express no concern for my own well being, and I express a misanthropic view of the world, but to have an opinion, you can't be a nihilist.

In any story, the villain is the catalyst. The hero's not a person who will bend the rules or show the cracks in his armor. He's one-dimensional intentionally, but the villain is the person who owns up to what he is and stands by it.

I feel like I've dreamed half of my life that hasn't happened yet, so a lot of times I'm going along, and I do stuff, and I know that I've done it. I have deja vus more than I have regular experiences. If half of your day is a deja vu, then you start to wonder, 'What is real and what isn't?'

The word 'Antichrist', to me, is the collective disbelief in god.

Leave me in a room with some crayons and I'll draw on the wall.

There's no reason to change what you are, but if you're not being you, then you need to acknowledge that.

To admit you want to have a comeback means you have to admit you weren't what you were supposed to be. You dropped below your own standard.

My father had a very violent temper, and he was never home. So I was kind of a mama's boy.

I was married to someone who wanted me to change. Become more adult, more responsible. I began not to like myself, not like what I do. I lost my identity. Everything began collapsing around me.

It's my job to be the Pierrot, the clown, in the theatrical sense.

When you want to die, you at least have a goal. You're aiming for something. It's not a good goal, but at least you want something. And you've got anger and fear, but at least you're feeling something.

I'm so famous, people expect me to sell as many records as Celine Dion or Puff Daddy.

There was definitely a lack of any sort of villain in the Clinton era, which is why, when Columbine happened, it was easy to pick on me. My face was around, and it made good TV.

I refuse to say things behind people's backs.

I'm thinking about entering a Marilyn Manson costume contest to see if I lose.

Anybody who does not evolve can become a self-parody. I have to evolve on a daily basis just to keep my own interest in what I do.

Finding someone who's willing to drown with you creates a situation where you no longer want to drown.

It's shocking to me that it's easier to buy a gun at Wal-Mart than it is to buy my record.

There's a certain group of people who are always going to dislike me and disagree with whatever I say.

I used to have nightmares about the Antichrist - what would happen, where it would come from, and who it would be.

Anybody intelligent enough to realize what America is, is not going to sit around and do nothing about it. They're going to be the same way that I am. They're going to be the same way our fans are. They're going to be pissed.

I don't have anything against Simon Cowell and 'The X Factor.'

I don't think I have ever tried to create things to encourage people to hurt others, or themselves.

I just don't like when there's a rumor that says I'm dating someone who is below my standards. But when I got divorced, my ex-wife said I was spending all my time with Lindsay Lohan and Angelina Jolie. I was like, 'Thank you for the big ups!'

I was a pizza delivery boy at the Pizza Oven in Canton. I wanted to get fired so bad, I actually wrecked the delivery car, but they wouldn't fire me because I was the only person they had working there.

I went to one AA meeting and I got asked for an autograph.

I was an extra on 21 Jump Street when I was 19 years old.

I'm not a role model. I'm a role villain.

When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.

In music, you feel a connection to the voice and think about the person behind it. In art that's secondary.

If Satan wasn't around, churches would go out of business.

Is adult entertainment killing our children? or is killing our children entertaining our adults?

I never said to be like me, I say to be like you and make a difference.

When you're taught to love everyone, to love your enemies, then what value does that place on love?

Sacrifice to me is something you do without expecting something in return.

My first memories of religion were being taken to Episcopal church. My father was Catholic, but my mother, I believe, was Episcopal. So I sort of veered off into the watered-down version of Catholicism.

Everything I was afraid of when I was growing up, I've become. I've taken on my nightmares, like the devil and the end of the world, and I've become those things.

As a kid I had buck teeth and braces and acne. I hated what I saw. I'm still not comfortable, but that's why I change and adapt the way I look.

I did vote Obama. But I've never believed in the authenticity of the two-party system.

People only hate what they see in themselves.