Quotes from Viv Albertine

I copied John Lennon; I copied a bit of David Bowie. It's such a shame, and I'm so glad that now young girls have so many different role models in all different walks of life.

We're so tribal in Britain about music. But my music - my guitar playing, the rhythms, et cetera - just express my personality, because I'm self-taught.

I like to smell a book before I start it. I fold over the pages, write comments in the margins, leave it on the bed next to my pillow when I fall asleep.

It's all very well for the Kinks and Damon Albarn to sing those songs and sneer at Mr. Nine to Five, but again, they're white men, so they didn't have it very hard.

A lot of the men I've dated have been incapable of even basic kindness.

Fashion wasn't a label back in the '70s. We made our own clothes because we had no money.

I think young men and boys are taught to fail. It's nothing to them; they do sport, they fall over, they shout, 'I'm all right,' and carry on. But with girls, they're so appallingly embarrassed to fail, it's like it's considered unfeminine.

People say you mellow as you get older, and I really haven't.

I'm very true to the old punk ethics of honesty and truthfulness and integrity... and still be authentic.

I think, often, people who do something new creatively don't benefit financially from it - it's the people who come after and make them palatable that make money.

I feel sorry for girls getting caught up in it and still thinking they have to define themselves and their success by being in a relationship, straight women, straight girls, by being in a heterosexual relationship or being in any relationship, as if that's in any way a mark of what kind of successful human being you are.

I didn't have many role models or interesting women to get stirred up by until Yoko Ono came along.

Writing is so much about rhythm. If you've got another rhythm in the room, it spoils the rhythm of the words.

If you've written something that moves you and frightens you, you just can't take it back.

I have a daughter. I have my imagination. I have friends. I, in no way, am going to louse that up with some idiot man, frankly. They drag you down - I'm talking about my generation of men.

If my 18-year-old daughter asked me whether she should lead a truth-hunting, artistic, uncompromising life as I have done, I'd say no, don't do it. It's a difficult and lonely path for a woman.

With the second book, I didn't have an ideal reader in mind, as it developed quite out of my control, this detective novel of why am I so full of anger, why did I pick up a guitar when I was poor and uneducated.

Look at Kate Bush, Patti Smith, Yoko Ono - three really private people, but when they're on stage or when they're singing, they let go like no one else.

I've burned all my bridges for the sake of getting as near as I can to the truth. And after years of searching for the truth, you find that that's all you can bear. The truth and nothing but the truth.

I'm not a nostalgic person.

I've only done a handful of things in my life that have stood out. The rest is just broth: mistakes and boredom.

I'm not a gifted storyteller, so I write what I know and hope that honesty resonates with other people's experiences.

I definitely thought the first book was going to be a one-off. I never thought I'd even write a book, not ever having aspired to be a writer. It's something that never occurred to me - a bit like it never occurred to me to play guitar when I was young. I just thought it was out of my league.

I do read a lot of autobiographies and biographies but from people who are not in my field - older women, older artists, Miles Davis.