Quotes from George Michael

I don't want to look at other people my age in leather. Why would I put it on?

I spent the first half of my career being accused of being gay when I hadn't had anything like a gay relationship.

I'm lucky to be alive.

Apart from some of the videos and haircuts, I don't think I've made any wrong moves, ha ha!

Not many people are really that meticulous with what they do, I suppose, but I'm just a control freak and terribly afraid of failure or regret. I work very hard on these things.

I've never done anything so political before. I've spent years shouting my mouth off about serious issues over dinner tables but never really had the confidence to express my views in a song.

My dad worked in a very typical first-generation immigrant fashion - 24 hours a day for years.

In the very early days of Wham! the attention felt great, but I do wonder how much freedom I gave away by trying to become something I wasn't.

My ego is sated.

I know that I sound self-satisfied, and I know that I've got an ego, but I don't have an ego problem.

Time can never mend the careless whisper of a good friend. To the heart and mind, ignorance is kind. There's no comfort in the truth, pain is all you'll find.

You can't imagine what it's like playing to people who have been loyal to you for 25 years and haven't seen you for 15.

I'm the luckiest writer on earth.

Playing with Queen was the biggest moment of my career. It was like living a childhood fantasy.

I suppose romantically there are fantasies that can still be realized. But not professionally.

At a certain age I just stopped arguing. I realized that there was no way [my father] could see, because for him to approve of what I was doing, he would have to have some belief in me as a musician.

Freedom. I will not give you up.

The thing that's weird is that we thought it was funny. We expected people to get the joke - that we [with Andrew Ridgeley] were two guys really making asses of ourselves.