I don't have joy in watching myself, whereas, actually, I quite like listening to my own music.
All we have to see is that I don't belong to you, and you don't belong to me.
I seem to think that anything worth having in life has to be painful to attain.
I define my sexuality in terms of the people that I love.
I think my idea of a perfect romance is when two people really belong to each other.
I think I've gotten everything I want out of the last years, and I still feel like I have a lot of options open to me.
I think for most of us, our biggest frailties are sexual.
I can't believe that I've written my best work yet. If I believed that, then I wouldn't bother releasing music anymore.
Change is a stranger you have yet to know.
50 percent of the people I perform for have come to scream at me and the other 50 percent have come to listen to the music.
I think marriage is a good thing for children, because it gives them a feeling of security.
I think I'm getting there, but it's very hard to perform at my absolute peak when an awful lot of people come just to make their presence known, when the lights go down and all you can hear is people screaming.
I suppose romantically there are fantasies that can still be realized. But not professionally.
I still believe that music is one of the greatest gifts that God gave to man.
I mean, it is the perfect situation to really love someone to death and to want to rip their clothes off at the same time, isn't it?
I just hope that I'll stay around musically for as long as I can. I love to think that I will still be satisfying myself and other people as a musician until the day I die.
I don't go for safe options. Romantically, I go for people who are a pain in the ass.
Everything was going my way. I was happily marching into the history books. Then it all just fell apart.
English people have seen me get through scandals.
Be good to yourself 'cause nobody else has the power to make you happy.
![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.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/george-michael-139828.jpg)
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.
I suppose maybe if I had been an attractive child, I would have had less inclination to push my physical presence.
I spent years growing up being told what my sexuality was.
I really have no plans for any kind of career in TV or anything, but if I wanted to become good at it, I could. But I don't really think it's in the cards.
I probably owe an apology to fans that have been supportive and have not wanted to believe any of this was true. It takes a little bit of the sheen off of the mystique.
I never had a moral problem with being gay.
![I lost my partner [Anselmo Feleppa] to HIV then it took about three years to grieve; then after that I lost my mother. I felt almost like I was cursed.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/george-michael-139882.jpg)
I lost my partner [Anselmo Feleppa] to HIV then it took about three years to grieve; then after that I lost my mother. I felt almost like I was cursed.
I left school at 17 and was a star by the time I was 18 - in certain parts of the world anyway.
I just mean people who seem unavailable in the sense that they're not prepared to totally cling to anyone. I'm very attracted to people who are basically free spirits.
I have two sisters. My father is Greek and comes from a family of seven. My mother is English and comes from a family of five.
I have to believe that somebody up there thinks I've still got some work to do.
I have the audience I deserve. Or at least I have the audience that represents the kind of people that I like.
I have no doubt that the music I release next will be better.
I have never thought about my sexuality being right or wrong. To me it has always been a case of finding the right person.
I have never felt any ethnic connection between the Greeks and me other than how hairy I am.
I have definitely reached the same level as Madonna in terms of sales. I'm really pleased about that.
I have been taken for a ride a couple of times. I've been hurt by people who I've had a 90 percent possibility of being hurt by.
I hate the actual traveling, but I like playing.
I had to walk away from America, and say goodbye to the biggest part of my career, because I knew otherwise my demons would get the better of me.
I had surprisingly little money when Wham! ended. You'd be very surprised how little, really, because you don't realize how much money it takes to maintain a band.
I had my very first relationship at 27 because I really had not actually come to terms with my sexuality until I was 24.
I got to say hello to Snoop Dogg. I got to, I was being barged out of the way by his bodyguards but I got to say hello to him which was cool.
![I get along really well with [my father] now, but I had a terrible time with him in my teenage years. All we did was scream at each other, and when we weren't screaming at each other, we just wouldn't talk to each other.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/george-michael-139865.jpg)
I get along really well with [my father] now, but I had a terrible time with him in my teenage years. All we did was scream at each other, and when we weren't screaming at each other, we just wouldn't talk to each other.
I find it too terrifying to go out in L.A.
I find it difficult enough as it is to keep some kind of normality in my life. I enjoy this experience, but I don't know where I'm going to take my career.
I don't want to look at other people my age in leather. Why would I put it on?
I don't really think that there is anyone in the modern pop business who I feel I want to spar with.
I don't really feel I deserve something if I haven't had to fight for it. It's not a conscious attitude, and it's stupid and wrong. Sometimes you do deserve things without having to put yourself through agony.
I don't like having my picture taken and I don't like looking at myself because I don't particularly like what I see.
I don't consider Americans bullies, but I do consider the American government bullying.
 (TV) was a great thing, it focused people, I think it showed young kids the way in many respects and I think a lot of people are still inspired by what happened in the mid-Eighties. ){kind=small}
I do think that Live Aid (1985) (TV) was a great thing, it focused people, I think it showed young kids the way in many respects and I think a lot of people are still inspired by what happened in the mid-Eighties.
![I didn't really think that it would be as easy as this. I did believe that the album [Faith] had a chance, because I though the material was strong enough, but things have just gone like clockwork. It's been incredible.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/george-michael-139853.jpg)
I didn't really think that it would be as easy as this. I did believe that the album [Faith] had a chance, because I though the material was strong enough, but things have just gone like clockwork. It's been incredible.
I didn't expect to enter into tabloid trivia or anything like that. So I suspect my perspective and a lot of my ideas changed fairly drastically. It was also rather confusing.
![I can't talk about Kathy [Jeung] anymore, because she doesn't want me to talk about her, and I'm not even sure that it's an ongoing relationship.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/george-michael-139849.jpg)
I can't talk about Kathy [Jeung] anymore, because she doesn't want me to talk about her, and I'm not even sure that it's an ongoing relationship.
I can't bear Catholicism.
I am really not interested or excited by repeating former successes.
I am a political person, though not with a big P.
I always knew I was attractive to girls just from the point of view that they liked me.
I also think I could probably repeat the commercial success; whether I want to or not is a different matter. I think there is still better work inside me.
Freedom. I won't let you down.
Freedom. I will not give you up.
For a while I took Ecstacy when it was not very available over here. I took it simply because it made me feel that everything was wonderful.
![Everything was meant to wind people up [in Make It Big ]. I don't know why we had this great pleasure in winding people up, but we really did think they would get the joke. And it backfired on us.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/george-michael-139838.jpg)
Everything was meant to wind people up [in Make It Big ]. I don't know why we had this great pleasure in winding people up, but we really did think they would get the joke. And it backfired on us.
Even though it's become a really cliched thing to see musicians working for charity, it's still effective and it still has to be done.
By the time I was in my early teens, we were able to move into a much more middle-class area. I had a comfortable adolescence.
![Both of us knew the band had run its course. We were both unhappy doing it, but I think the way Andrew [Ridgeley] was being treated as the less important half of the duo had finally taken its toll on him.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/george-michael-139832.jpg)
Both of us knew the band had run its course. We were both unhappy doing it, but I think the way Andrew [Ridgeley] was being treated as the less important half of the duo had finally taken its toll on him.
As I became George professionally and everyone called me George, Yog became the name that people who knew me from before started to use. It became more valuable to me.
Andrew [Ridgeley] and I had demoed a couple of our songs very cheaply, and we weren't expecting any kind of record deal. We just walked around with our demo tape, trying to find someone to give us the money to demo properly. Instead of that, we got a record contract. It was just an incredibly lucky break.
Basically I see that song as a bunch of images which I threw together to represent the fact that I was seeing one girl and then I started seeing another, and it was just the guilt in between those two periods. The ballads I've written since have been about things that really hurt me.
Because of the media, the way the world is perceived is as a place where resources and time are running out. We're taught that you have to grab what you can before it's gone. It's almost as if there isn't time for compassion.
George was the easy part. As for Michael, I had always liked the name, and my father's brother is named Michael. I thought it was a good idea because there are a lot of Greeks in England with the second name of Michael; as a child I had a Greek friend whose second name was Michael. It was like getting the name that I wanted without having to get rid of the Greek element.
I couldn't change anything without changing the end position, and I'm perfectly happy now. So whatever I feel in some sense may have been a mistake in the past is, in another sense, not a mistake, because it's left me here.
I don't know what age the people who review my concerts reached puberty, I don't know if people in America reach puberty a lot later than they do in England or something like that, but the majority of those people are in their late teens and early twenties.
I think part of it has got to be compensation, yes, for the fact that when I was a kid, I wasn't particularly attractive. But at the same time I don't remember ever thinking, Oh, my God, I'm such a mess; I'm the ugliest sod in the class.
