Top 30 Alison Mosshart Quotes

I do always want to be creating something; I can’t help it. I don’t know why that is, but I’m certainly not gonna knock it now, at the age of 36. It seems to be working.

I can’t talk on the radio at all. When the red light comes on, my hands go up in the air: I think they’re trying to get to my face, to shut me up. I don’t talk on stage for the same reason.

I don’t own a pair of sweatpants.

I had a bunch of paintings around at my house, and someone said to me, ‘Why don’t you just put them on Instagram? Why don’t you show people these?’ And I didn’t want to – it was just something else I would have to do. But eventually, I was like, ‘What’s the harm?’ And the response was so insane!

Every time I do a project, it always comes with a level of discomfort and not knowing how to do it.

I’ve spent my whole life in airports. I don’t come home but every two and a half months, which is pretty crazy.

Everybody wants you to do this thing that you’ve always been doing forever. That’s what they want: they want Martin Scorsese to make the same film two hundred times rather than trying to be something different.

I have so many ideas while I’m driving.

The crazy colors tend to wash out so quick. Basically, it ensures that you never wash your hair, so it starts to do some cool stuff.

I love touring. I can’t wait. Everything is just normal when you’re finally on tour. I think, for me, it’s my happiest thing; I love moving around, and I have friends and family all over the place. It’s kind of my time. It’s almost like home. It’s when I get to see everybody.

When you do music, your friends are writers, actors, painters. It’s all under the same roof. So anything creative is interesting to me.

I just sang at first – I didn’t ever play guitar before The Kills.

People can be quite cynical. ‘The Kills are too cool.’ There’s been an on-and-off relationship with the music press that loves us and then hates us then loves us again. I don’t think any kind of press is reliable.

I love being on stage more than anything, and I think that’s what comes across. I think the most honest representation of any music is to play it right there in front of people. It’s a moment – it’s all one of a kind, every little part of it. There’s no repeat.

When I was really young, my mum used to make my clothes – I hated that. I liked the way boys dressed – I still do. I wanted to wear what they wore.

Every day, it’s a different country, different time zone. If you asked me where home was, I’ve never felt like I’ve had that. My idea of comfort is to leave a place. Two weeks is sort of my max.

I think we choose gear by the way that it looks. We choose lots of things by the way that it looks. I don’t like bands that look like roadies. I don’t like when I can’t tell who’s the guitar tech and who’s the guitar player.

I actually got into music because of art and because of skateboarding: All those graphics and punk bands and fanzines – they were glued together in my brain.

You have a physical human reaction to something that another human being made. When you remove the human from it, and you chop it up, make it all perfect, you have a different reaction. Something is not there. You can feel it when it’s there.

Touring can be repetitive at times.

I used to go to a lot of Pam Hogg shows. The thing about London Fashion Week is that, generally, we’re on tour and traveling around, so it’s very rare that I actually catch it. I like to go to Burberry because I know a few girls who work there. I kind of follow friends.

All of my art is suitcase-sized. I always paint in mediums that dry pretty quickly because I’ve got to throw them in my suitcase and go. And I have so much because of that, because it’s what I’ve always done to pass the time, and I like it.

In the studio, you can always stop, rewind and do it again, but on stage, you can never do that – it’s a different energy. It separates good bands from bad bands, being able to play, perform and really capture an audience. I think that’s the hardest part.

I hate sunshine so much. I can only cope with it when it’s bitterly, bitterly cold.

It’s fun and super exciting to see how other people work, how other people write music, and how other people put things together. To me, it’s an endless learning process, and I love doing it because everybody works so completely differently.

If I acted like I did onstage in normal life, everyone would probably hate me.

I get along great with my family. My parents are really proud of me and my brother, who’s a chef here in New York. I don’t see my parents often, but they’re very supportive, especially as I get older.

You want to put out a record that you feel is exactly as you want it. Nobody wants to tour for two years on a record they don’t like.

Record covers still inspire me in terms of clothes, some bands just look sharp. But I still wear stuff I owned when I was 16.

When you’re recording in the midst of touring, you get a different sense about you. Things are more rocking, darker, heavier and louder. You’re thinking about the audience that you’re seeing every night.