Top 66 Toyah Willcox Quotes

I have experienced ageism and sexism. In my 20s, I was told by a camera lighting man I needed plastic surgery. In my 30s I was constantly told I needed to lose weight.

I’ve always played all the old songs. I’d go and see Peter Gabriel or Madonna and be surprised if they didn’t play all the hits. People don’t want to come and hear the B-sides.

I want to make money but not if it involves exploitation.

I think very fast and visually and I have to write down an idea right away or it will be lost forever.

I can’t live in a world of dullards. So I think on that level, I’m definitely punk.

I was very naughty, even as a baby.

I try to eat small meals throughout the day.

I am disproportionately ambitious.

My mother, Barbara, was a dancer from the age of 14 to 19. She toured with the comedian Max Wall in a dance group of six girls.

See, I hold myself through my own muscle strength. That is why I’m built like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

We are all part of a vibrant, energetic life force and my overwhelming belief is that the mind survives outside of the body and it survives and works outside the body.

I was every mother’s nightmare – I was a hair model from 14, and I started coming home with red, blue, green hair.

I always fly British Airways. I find them to be the most dependable and I need to be on time when I’m travelling for gigs.

I’m not vegetarian. I eat what I crave, but most of the time I don’t crave meat.

I’ve studied nutrition since I was 23 and I began to find that a lot of my eating habits were to do with boredom and frustrations rather than hunger. When I was thirsty I would eat rather than drink.

I have always had disrupted, broken sleep.

The late 80s was quite a difficult time for me as an artist because I’d almost become a parody of myself. All people wanted was pink hair and for me to sing ‘I Want to Be Free.’ There’s nothing wrong with either of those but people need to see you as a person for you to be an artist.

Snob value has great appeal. I have a couple of properties on the French Riviera that have doubled in value – I may buy more as the region continues to be developed.

Getting older doesn’t worry me, what does is getting unfit.

In my experience, women are conditioned to expect and accept that life will not only let them down, but they themselves will be the reason for their own downfall in the fullness of time.

When punk started, it wasn’t subtle.

I’m 5ft 1in and despise being small. People think I’m cute and cuddly, and I’m not.

I moved to London to work at the National Theatre and spent my first wage packet on Patti Smith, Bowie and Velvets records.

Remember all those you work with. You never know when you will meet again.

As a young child, my family holidays were always in Rock, Cornwall, with my parents, older brother Kim and sister Nicola.

I love being in the United States because I feel so energised there.

My father, Beric, ran a joinery business and owned two factories.

I have a very powerful belief structure. I’m very spiritual. I’m not religious but I am spiritual.

I have absolutely no sense of my success whatsoever, in fact, I only have a sense of not doing what I intended to do. I don’t know who I am.

I have a very strict lifestyle. It’s a vegetarian household and we grow our own produce.

I think Marilyn Manson has a better take on America than Michael Moore and I don’t think he’s appreciated for his intellect.

I think people need reassurance that there is an afterlife. That’s perfectly understandable.

You should never undermine friendship and loyalty.

My relationship with my father was absolutely wonderful. He was the love of my life and pivotal in my life. He was a good, kind man with very strong Buddhist and spiritual beliefs. He could do no wrong and he was my best friend until he died in 2009.

Punk is the voice that shouts the loudest from the silence of inertia.

The world doesn’t reward talent, it mostly rewards those who are connected.

Everyone else at school was terrified of me, and they were always laughing at me.

I have a confession. I don’t enjoy animation. I have no idea why because I absolutely adore doing voiceovers. I think part of me feels that animation has put an actor out of work.

Women of all ages need to be present in the media to instill girls and young women with self-confidence about their futures. And women of my age need healthy role models. Otherwise, how can we build the future dreams we still deserve to have?

I take books on learning to bed – music theory, colour theory – and usually my brain thinks, ‘Um, I think I’d rather turn off,’ than learn something.

I turn a lot of jobs down because they are patronising.

I’ve lived with my dyslexia and gone on to have a successful recording career, but academically I never had a chance in hell because I didn’t fall into that bracket.

Because of my career I have a huge wardrobe of fantastic costumes and they take up almost an entire house. Many of my stage outfits are worth a lot of money. To save cash I buy my more practical outfits from Primark.

If you don’t protect the NHS, you’re going to have health ghettoes where people can’t get treated.

I’m just not interested in the norm. The only example I can give you is I can’t go to a hairdresser and talk about holidays. I just don’t live in that world. It’s not me.

Acupuncture has made all the difference to my sleep.

I cannot emphasise enough how important exercise is. I have to do at least a three-mile fast walk a day, usually in the afternoon. Movement is incredibly important in helping my body use up my energy.

I define myself by my work, so I’d be a sad creature without working. I just wouldn’t get up in the morning.

I am creative with both my limitations and my sense that everything is possible.

When I left home at 17, I became successful astronomically fast. But I think my parents were so frightened of me failing that they focused on that more than my success.

My mother never slept.

I believe in the paranormal and I accept it but I don’t change my life around it. I’m not an avid follower, as it were. I am open-minded.

Growing up with dyslexia and struggling in the classroom because of it, I know how infuriating and frustrating it can be to be treated wrongly as though you’re of below par intelligence.

My 30s were a nightmare because I was so uncomfortable. If I could have unzipped myself and stepped out of my body, I would have done.

Live to live. Don’t live to die. And never stop learning.

My mother is not a naturally happy person and is very complex. She won’t allow any of us to touch her. Not even my father hugs her. And, as a family, we never kiss each other. Yet we do have a close relationship.

In 2010 I had to learn to walk again when I had my legs made the same length, after living with one leg two inches longer than the other until the age of 51.

Look and image were very important – there was already incredible pressure to look feminine and sexy but I wanted to look individual and strong. I didn’t have any role models except Little Nell from ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show.’

I have a habit of needing cake or chocolate when I get an energy dip around 4 P.M. I wish I could stop.

I don’t think my insomnia is fixable: I think it’s in my DNA.

Melissa Caplan made my costumes from the 70s to the mid-80s. I was very influenced by futurism and reading a lot of Marge Piercy.

Some people believe tarot cards are a form of black magic or senseless new age mysticism but for me they are a practical way of talking directly to the universe.

I remember my mother doing housework until four in the morning and then a couple of hours later taking me to school.

I was at stage school in Birmingham Rep when I was called down to London for an audition in the National Theatre. Maximilian Schell, the film actor, was casting Tales from the Vienna Woods. He was looking at me for a small, but significant, role.

I’ve never lived with a ‘be careful’ philosophy.

If I need a bit of RI&IR, I’d go to the Maldives because technology can’t reach you.