Toyah Willcox

“I had no interest in people telling me to be feminine, to be ladylike, to wear dresses - it just made me rebel completely.”

“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.”

“New Orleans is thrilling. The history is as rich as the food.”

“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.”

“When punk started, it wasn't subtle.”

“I'm really muscular because my mother had to teach me how to straighten my own spine. It wasn't good for my relationship with her because she was dictatorial about it, but in the end I was able to disguise what I had.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“One man is quite enough for me, I'd find three exhausting!”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 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 am disproportionately ambitious.”

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

“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.”

“The world doesn't reward talent, it mostly rewards those who are connected.”

“I'd had a strict religious education.”

“I have a very powerful belief structure. I'm very spiritual. I'm not religious but I am spiritual.”