A biography for Genesis P-Orridgehasn’t been written yet.
“All culture, all important culture, is always linked to how people express and experience being alive.”
“We live in this miraculous technological environment, and yet our human behaviour is still governed by basic impulses from prehistoric times.”
“Somebody once asked me, 'What do you do?' and I flippantly answered 'I'm a cultural engineer.' With hindsight, I kind of am - but if I got too self-conscious about it, it wouldn't work.”
“In the old days, maybe we'd come across Captain Beefheart, buy a record, go, 'This is great!' and notice how his music is evolving, changing, and becoming more complex, more radical. And we would follow that progression and see it reflected in the alternative culture it came from.”
“To be an 'artist' is as much a calling from and to a divine service as becoming a physician, nurse, priest, shaman, or healer.”
“I've always aimed to create something pure.”
“I think, with TG, in our own ways, we have been committed to the idea of evolution on some level and change on some level - that human behaviour may not be changeable, but one has to try and be optimistic and work towards content that might signify change.”
“'Star Trek' works for me because it deals with the petty issues of humankind.”
“Girls together getting dressed up can be really good fun.”
“Curiosity is a great weapon for the artist.”
“Ian Curtis was a young genius.”
“I've had all my teeth replaced with solid gold replicas of the originals.”
“I am so sick and tired of being told what I'm supposed to look like!”
“I think we can only ultimately change the world by example and by fearlessly embracing what could happen.”
“I believe in being completely open to the most unlikely explanation.”
“It turns out that there's a huge community of African-American musicians whose main influence is Throbbing Gristle.”
“I've discovered the joys of happiness.”
“The great irony was that, while I was being portrayed as a monster, I was in Khatmandu with my children, doing soup kitchens for Tibetan refugees, using all the money from my records to feed three hundred people a day, and working with monks connected to the Sammye Ling Buddhist centre in Scotland.”
“We were already, in 1981, bemoaning the fact that people were using certain accessorised ideas and images that they connected with us - sort of strange buildings and neo-fascist regimes and the 'dark side' of human culture.”
“You have an absolute right to translate poetry in any form with any sound. It's all up for grabs.”