"She's like this perfection, this utter purity that's uncorrupted by anything. And if somebody were to fuck with my child, I would not hesitate to kill them." -Courtney speaking about Frances

"Barbie is NOT your friend!" -Courtney

"When you're dying and your life is flashing before your eyes, you're gonna be thinking about the great things that you did, the horrible things that you did, and the emotional impact that someone had on you and that you had on somebody else. Those are the things that are relevant. To have some sort of emotional impact that transcends your time, that's great. As long as you don't mess it up by being undignified when you're old." -Courtney on leaving her mark

"I like there to be some testosterone in rock, and it's like I'm the one in the dress who has to provide it!" -Courtney Love

"I'm driven. I am. I'm driven for some reason. But I don't know where I'm going." -Courtney Love in 1992

"If you want to ask about my drug problem, go ask my big, fat, smart, ten pound daughter; she'll answer any questions you have about it." -Courtney Love in 1992

"You wanna put it in me? I'm not a woman! I'm a fucking force of nature! You're dick will fly right off!" -Courtney Love in 1995

"He's not going to get away from me that easily. I'll follow him through hell" -Courtney after Kurt's suicide.

"Remember, if you write anything nasty about me, I'll come around and blow up your toilet." -Courtney Love to a writer in 1995

"I might lie a lot, but never in my lyrics." -Courtney Love in 1995

"Somebody wrote "How can she rock in a Versace gown?" Well easy, let me show you." -Courtney Love in 1997

"I am just the classic person who wants to learn stuff. I want good tutors, and with Kurt I had the best." -Courtney Love on Kurt and music

"I'm a survivor, at least that's what everyone tells me." -Courtney Love

"I don't mean to be a diva, but some mornings you wake up and you're Barbara Streisand." -Courtney Love

"He had to go be an angel." -Courtney to Frances on why Kurt was gone

"I wish my mom gave me breast implants when I was 17" -Courtney on Britney Spears

"My daughter thinks I'm a god because I introduced her to the Spice Girls" -Courtney on Frances

"Real girls aren't perfect, perfect girls aren't real" -Courtney

"If you treat a woman like a dog, she will piss on you" -Courtney

"I found my inner bitch and ran with her" -Courtney

"I was so quiet. I was the quietest person, and I got picked on, but I CHANGED MY WAYS" -Courtney

"Because you can't scream your whole career, you've got to sit in your room and learn scales." -Courtney

"If it's one thing I am, it's lucid. I know that's not a very heavy word like intellectual or whatever, but still, to take away my lucidity, that pisses me off." -Courtney

"The attitude is that Kurt is more important because he sells more records. Well, fuck you! Suck my dick!" -Courtney in 1992

"You have a right to tell your critical opinion and I have to honor that right--and that is me being a patriot." - Courtney circa 1996

"Every actor I've ever met wants to be a musician, but every musician I know is glad to be a musician. It's fun and it's moving and it touches people." - Courtney circa 1996

"I think there's more women in rock, that's why there's so much emphasis on fashion..." -Courtney at VH1 Fashion Awards

"The difference is the perception" -Courtney to reporters 1997

"I adored him and felt he was a genius. I credit them- Gianni and Donatella- with helping me make a transition to a new period in my life without compromising who I am." -Courtney about Gianni Versace

"I'm not psychic, but my lyrics are" -Courtney to Kurt Loder

"What am I supposed to do, turn into fucking Mother Teresa all of a sudden? Am I supposed to write a country record because I had a baby? I've felt more sexual warfare, political, medical, and media terror in the last couple months than I've ever felt in my whole life." -Courtney to Spin about having a baby

"Sam's a complete prodigy. I told her, I can't play guitar that well. But the way I play is what can fuck with an audience. So watch my body. If Samantha doesnt follow me, its going to sound like lame power pop shit. What I am is an incredibly sloppy rythmatist. But within my weird sloppiness there's a real gift, a sort of sexiness. Like when I was off doing a movie, the rest of them were rehersing without me. I walked in and I was like, my god, this is perky power pop. You guys need to get fucked!" -Courtney on Sam Maloney and herself

"Are you trying to electrocute me?" Courtney asked. "Hey guys," she said to the security team, "could you kick the shit out of the guy with the squirt gun? If you don't, I will, because when I die, it's not going to be in front of you. When I die, it's going to be in a nice quiet bed with a tube down my throat." -Courtney in a concert

"I see our daughter and he's right there. She looks a lot like him, she is a lot like him, and it's really nice. Real sweet, real grumpy, diva, bossy boots, just such a pure heart. But it makes me, like, crazy protective. I'm just ready to hurt the first person that messes with her." -Courtney talking about Frances (and Kurt)

"I'm so tired of being cool. I've been cool forever, been obsessed by it. That's what's expected of you when you're a rock musician. You become so cool, so cynical, so ironic. So now I want to be part of the establishment. And I'm not that young anymore. My daughter goes to kindergarten and it won't be long before the other kids start asking her what her mother does for a living and then it's a hell of a lot more cool for her to say her mom is an actress than having to say that her mom does stage diving when she's playing gigs. Being an actress is so much more respectable and you know what? Sometimes I feel like Barbara fucking Streisand." -Courtney 1997

"Once upon a time, you were the first of your generation. Ignore everything else that went on before you" -Courtney to Frances Bean, watching her inspect a heart-shaped pillow with a needle and thread in it

"Who's that?" Love asks her girl, Frances, stroking her daughter's hair and pointing to a ceramic angel on the bedside table. "Daddy," the child responds.

"Frances Bean!" Courtney calls from where she watches in Forman's director's chair. "You have to be nice to Woody because he's my movie pretend-husband." Turning, Love whispers, "She doesn't like Woody because she's seen us kissing and she flips out about that." -Courtney on the Set

"The birds, Frances, look at the birds. Do you want to fly like the birds?" -Courtney to Frances

"You can't please everyone. I don't care if I get criticized. I don't give a shit if I get a bad review. I don't care if people say I'm a bitch or obnoxious, 'cos I am." -Courtney

"I always thought I was pretty fabulous before, but WHATEVER!" -Courtney at VH1 Fashion Awards

"She was a ballsy bitch, but I wouldn't stick my head in no oven." -Courtney on poet Sylvia Plath, 1995

"There's no 'versus' in there, and nobody's trying to make me choose. I know it's weird. I haven't seen it done very much, or at all, with people doing both well. I can think of Frank Sinatra. But you know what? I've been around a number of things that have happened that haven't been done. So I'm really undaunted by that. I don't care." -Courtney on music and acting, 1996

"I'm not a woman, I'm a force of nature." -Courtney

"I'm not going to hurt anybody other than that dick who keeps writing songs about me." -Courtney about Dave Grohl in a Howard Stern interview

"Cocaine is like really evil coffee." -Courtney telling her daughter about drugs

"She's only 22 and she's like, I wanna play with Mandonna and Michael Jackson. So I introduced her to Madonna. I told her, okay, that's easy cause if I have you in to play, then Madonna will want you. So, Sam, that door's open. You can walk out any time. You'll come back cause it's cold out there! They all come back. My stylist worked for Madonna. My manager... back in a month" -Courtney on Sam and Madonna

"I like to sleep with guys, not to work with them. I wanted to have an all-female band. When I was looking for a guitarist, the ad I put on said, 'women preferred'. But then Eric was the first to answer, and he had this great technique. I wanted him to have breasts, but that's ok." -Courtney on Eric

Patty Schemel

"She's amazing." -Patty on Melissa Auf Der Maur, 1995.

"It's important. I'm not out there with that fucking pink flag or anything, but it's good for other people who live somewhere else in some small town who feel freaky about being gay to know that there's other people who are and that it's ok." -Patty on being a role model, 1995.

Eric Erlandson

"I always tell people she's a pussycat but no one believes me" -Eric about Courtney

"We're a real group where everybody effects the band, it's not just one person." -Eric about Hole

"I think Courtney's one of the most amazing guitar players out there. I mean, she has a really unique sense of rhythm, she plays really hard and actually, I've learned a lot from her as a guitarist." -Eric on Courtney

"We're all little misfits." -Eric

"She called me up and talked my ear off, and I was like "Who the hell was that?" We met at this coffee shop, and I saw her and I thought "Oh, God. Oh, no, what am I getting myself into?" She grabbed me and started talking, and she's like 'I know you're the right one' and I hadn't even opened my mouth yet." -Eric, describing his first encounter with Courtney

"I don't know. I had to be rock star." -Eric

"I'm against all these bands coming back - Sex Pistols - you just destroy everything that's cool about you. Once you're in a band and you die, stay dead." -Eric

"Rodney [Bingenheimer] is the Charles Bukowski of glam punk, with extra cheese and no alcohol." -Eric

"She's the celebrity punk, and we're the celebrity.. punks." -Eric about Courtney and Hole

"What the hell are you talking about?" -Eric, answering if it is difficult being a man in rock today

"Armlets made by cutting the toes off socks." -Eric on his fave fashion accessory, 1999

"I let my ego go a lot of times. I let my pride go. People in my life sometimes don't understand and get frustrated when I have to do that. But I know what I want. I'm not a 'yes' person or a sycophant. I don't see myself as supporting somebody all the time or following them around like a puppy. I'm my own person. I can put up with a lot if I think something good is going to come out of it. Somebody recently said to me, 'it seems like you're the perfect combination of patience and obsessiveness.' In order for us to make music, I have to be patient. And at the same time, I'm very obsessive. I can't do anything else until I see a project done. That's a problem I have. I had no life for the past two years, exept for working on this album [Celebrity Skin]. My whole life is in that piece of plastic." -Eric

"'The Amazon Planet, featuring Poor Eric,' that's another band joke," he says. "Then there's the Viking thing: I'm a Viking you're an Amazon. Fine. Vikings and Amazons can co-exist." -Eric

"Kurt had always heard that Nirvana producer Steve Albini played this metal guitar and that's how he got all that sustain and high end on the early Big Black records, So Kurt told me about this Veleno thing, and I said, 'I'm going to look into it.' I found this shop in Tacoma, Washington, that had one. It was when Hole was recording Live Through This. I loved it. Pure sustain. I started looking around for more." -Eric

"The difference is that Courtney hates the fact that I'm not a girl. That creates more tension. There's not a lot of rock bands where the female calls the shots." -Eric on Courtney

"That's not me waxing the surfboard." -Eric

"I believe in free speech...write whatever you want, but there should be a code (of emotional ethics).... it's just being sensitive." -Eric

"Patty decided to go in a different direction but she was a part of the shaping of this record and... let's leave it at that." -Eric on Patty leaving Hole

"It was Courtney and Lisa on the bass with no drummer. I stood there playing whatever noise I could think of, and they were strumming their guitars, screaming at the top of their lungs. I thought 'Wow, this is gonna be interesting!'" -Eric on his audition with Hole

"I'm a surfer! I'm a surfer!" -Eric

"She was no longer delicious..." -Eric on why he split up with Drew Barrymore

"Grammar Grammar Grammar!" -Eric

"I don’t have any friends" -Eric to Spin magazine 1995

"My parents never told me I would go to hell if I masturbated." -Eric

"I know it's going to be different than [Celebrity Skin]. It might be a lot moodier. I'd still like to work with a real producer, more of an old-school-type producer...that's into making sure things are recorded right and working on the songs instead of just throwing it down." -Erlandson says that he would have liked to work with legendary country producer Owen Bradley, who died in 1998 at the age of 82-Launch 1/9/98

"A lot of our audience couldn't go to those shows. They weren't allowed in...Either they weren't into that other band or they had parents saying, 'No, you can't go'...And also just being pulled into this wrestling match thing that was going on in the press between the two frontpeople in both bands, [and] what was being said onstage. [There was] just a lot of negative energy around it.... We found out financial reasons why it didn't make any sense. So I think it's important when something is going wrong you stop it and try to fix it sooner rather than later, so that's what we did. I think [we were] real wise by doing that when we did instead of carrying it on and then suffering" -Eric on why Hole pulled out of the Marilyn Manson tour halfway through the trek

Melissa Auf Der Maur

"She's everything a drummer should be. Sports oriented, young, fresh, healthy, so eager, big muscles. She's from Queens, New York" -Melissa on Sam Maloney

"The zodiac gave me insight on immediate matters and on the mystery of human interactions. It offered me potential explanations for why other Pisces made me feel crazy or why I wanted to kiss Scorpio's so badly. Try it, please." -Melissa on astrology, in 1995

"I happen to be obsessed with footwear - the bigger the better. I collect wacky vintage shoes, boots, heels and platforms." -Melissa on her shoe fetish, 1995

Samantha Maloney

"I had two days to learn the first three songs off 'Live Through This' and I literally just went in dressed the way I normally dress, in sweat pants, a T-shirt and running shoes, and played for them the way I normally played. All the other girls had put all their makeup on and their best punk outfits and were trying to impress the band, but that wasn't what they wanted." -Sam on her Hole audition, 1999

Kristen Pfaff

"Kristen was an incredibly driven person. Whatever she set her mind to, she could accomplish." -A friend on Kristen

"Hole, right now, we're essentially a pop band. You know, it's a whole different thing. I had to learn a different style of bass playing, and while it may surfacely appear to be easier, it's harder. Because of the subtleties." -Kristen speaking about Hole, in 1994.

Caroline Rue

"All they tell me is to pass the pepper." -Caroline on Hole's early meetings with managements, 1992

"I mainly went at it in a conceptual way, thinking, I am an artist and this is a concept, so I didn't take it seriously and learn my rudiments. I was mainly a basher, doing these so-called tribal beats. I used to excuse any deficiencies with the mere fact that I am a woman. But now I really want to get to know the craft. I'm trying to work on control, the dynamics of being able to play very, very lightly and to build up to an extremely loud and powerful sound. So I'm going to be taking lessons." -Caroline on learning to play the drums, 1992

Jill Emery

"I met this hippie that had a bass and I didn't know much about hippies. I was into punk rock at the time. Now I'm a hippie. I sold my 10 speed and got this bass and fell in love, and it's the only thing that I know and want to do, and I'll probably be in a jazz band doing comedy when I'm sixty." -Jill on herself and music, 1991

Others

"I like Courtney, but she's fucking bonkers." -Mark Arm, Mudhoney.

"I just want you people to know that Courtney Love, lead singer of the sensational pop group Hole, is the best fuck in the world." - Kurt Cobain on Courtney

"I wish I'd never known Courtney now, cos I thought she was gonna be a really cool person and now she's a total dickhead. She needs shooting and I'll shoot her. This is her big chance and she's fucking up so badly. She was horrible, though. She was one of those people that you want to talk about all the time, but being around is unbearable. But in 1981 there was something that was a light in her. I spent her 16th birthday with her. She was fixated with the same shit she's coming out with in interviews now. She used to phone me at 4:30am and the conversation would go : 'Fuck Fucking FUCKING AAARGH!' 'Courtney, what?' 'I THINK I'VE FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING GOT IITTTTTT!!!!! AAAAAAAGH!' 'Got what, Courtney?' 'THE NANCY ROLE! THE FUCKING NANCY FUCKING ROLE! AAARGH!' But she didn't get it, so she went mad. And she's had to actually become Nancy Spungen." - Julian Cope on Courtney

"She says I'm paranoid because, quote - unquote, I have this thing that she's going to fuck me publicly. And then, the first thing she does is go and call up a reporter and says 'Billy's not really involved, and he doesn't have any writing credits.' I was the svengali on that album. It was only a few months ago and there she was, totally denying it. Basically, she's still very, very concerned about how these things are seen in indie - rock - world thinking. She's doing Versace ads but she's still worried about what Melody Maker's gonna say! It's one world or the other, Courtney. She's beyond indie - pop's pull, her gravity is way beyond that. She's in the diva business and divas have to keep rolling. Just look at the Celine Dion's of this world - they keep rolling. They're like entities beyond themselves. If she had her act together, she could obscure someone like Patti Smith - she has that much raw talent. In terms of intelligence, she's almost a genius in an insane kind of way. She said I'm a great fuck? I am a great fuck. I mean, you'd have to be a great fuck to be with her." Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins

"I saw her, everything was fine. She's totally like completely changed. She doesn't even take pills or nothing. She's taking Hollywood by storm, she got a Golden Globe nomination, she's scarily together right now. Courtney's always amusing, I'll say that for her. She's incredibly intelligent and really funny. Whatever. She's Courtney and she's off drugs. I'm really happy for her because obviously that wasn't working for her." - Evan Dando, The Lemonheads

"I first met her at a script reading at my house. She arrived three hours late. Woody (Harrelson), who'd been waiting around the whole time, was mad. She came in and Woody said, 'Courtney, when we start shooting, I'll give you a half hour. Anybody deserves a half hour. But don't ever do this to me on the set.' Love did not like Woody's attitude, and asked him pointedly, 'Who the fuck are you?' At that point, Woody jumped up from his chair and threw Love to the ground like a professional wrestler. When she started to fight him, he got on top of her, pinned his knees on her arms and said, 'Bitch, you're not getting up 'til you apologize.' Love apologized, and they got on just fine after that." - Larry Flynt, pornographer, subject of Courtney's film The People Vs Larry Flynt.

"Courtney was her own little star act. She was taking drugs, invoking her husband, anything to get attention. Which she still does, but now she's learnt that there's other ways to get attention. Which is fine. She's obviously interesting to people. I mean, everything revolves around her, ya know? That's her thing. You have to relate to her. It's like, I'm reading The Beautiful And The Dammed by F Scott Fitzgerald and essentially his wife's character always wants to hear about herself, like, 'Really? and what did I do?' Courtney's like that." - Steve Malkmus, Pavement

"I asked myself, 'What is the last band in the world I would ever, ever want to tour with?' and it was Hole, beyond a doubt. But then I thought, 'I love a challenge, I like to surround myself with aggravation, it helps me perform better.' And I thought, 'Well here's a chance to show Courtney the difference between being a celebrity and being a real rock star.' We're just going to blow her off the stage. My show will be the biggest and greatest show of the 90s. She never talked to me until I sold a million records. Sometimes we talk and it seems ok, other times, she's just a bitch. I really don't like her too much." - Marilyn Manson, whose tour with Hole ended with Hole leaving the tour.

"If Nick Broomfield never found anyone with affection for Courtney Love, it's only because he conspicuously avoided the countless friends, colleagues and fans who appreciate her talent and admire her as a person. But then, why would Broomfield have opened up his film to those of us who work with Courtney and are close to her when there are so many bitter left - behinds and desperate attention - seekers eager to validate his attack on her character? Inquisitors in every age, scared of forceful women, have used all kinds of half - baked testimony to whip up chants of 'Burn the witch!'" - Edward Norton on Broomfield's Documentary; "Kurt and Courtney"

"No, I didn't fuck Courtney Love. She's a manipulator and a careerist." - Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails

"She gave me all this advice. She said 'You know, you don't have to be interesting all the time' and I thought, 'oh, that's right.'" - Christina Ricci, Courtney's co-star in 200 Cigarettes, after Christina rang Courtney to apologize for calling her a sellout.

"I was in a real state. I think that it'd be expected anyway, cos it's not a normal situation to be in. No one tells you how to deal with fame. So yes, Courtney was the best friend I could have : the fact that she said, 'just relax, let it go, you'll feel better...' When bad things are written about you, it's like every word is five inches big. She knows all about that." - Gavin Rossdale, Bush

"I think what she has to offer just as a pop icon to the public at large is so significant. There's no comparison to what you usually get being a musician or an actor. No comparison. She's not part of the machine, she hasn't sold herself out. She's made certain compromises that are acceptable to her, if only just, and in doing so she's widened her audience a great deal. And if, in doing that, what she's done has raised the stakes a little bit in terms of what the value is, what the quality is, then that's an achievement." - Michael Stipe, R.E.M.

"...wickedly sarcastic, ironic, quick-witted, and hilarious..." -Carol on Courtney

"...Love is too smart not to be aware of her tragic diva status..." -Love Letters, John Istel

"...She expresses her opinions and reacts to others..." - Seattle Times on Courtney

"Courtney will make it through all of this- one of the reasons I love her is that she's so strong. Courtney says she's a cockroach- no matter how hard you stomp on her, she'll still survive." -Kat Bjelland on Courtney

"I am fascinated by Courtney Love, but the same way I am by someone who's got Tourette's syndrome walking in Central Park." -Madonna

Australian Journalist: "A question for Melissa and Eric then. Is Courtney a difficult person to work with? Is she the demanding star"? Melissa: "Eric's the difficult one." Courtney: "I agree." Eric: "Diva, diva, diva". Courtney: "Eric!" Eric: "I mean it! I am!"

Courtney: "You are a bad interview." Eric: "Well, Courtney, maybe I'll just practice in front of the mirror."