--Important piece of press - Rolling Stone Magazine Front Cover January 23 1997 MM:"This is going to be an important piece of press. It's going to be a piece of history that I want people to look at when I'm gone, and maybe it will help them understand, what I was thinking at the time when I did this record. There's been so much press and so many people feeding this sensationalism. But at the same time, I want people to know that I tried to explain it to them when they had the chance to listen. It's not going to be an easy task. I pity anybody who has to spend a day with me."
--Setting Down the Mic Stand - Circus Magazine February 18 1997 MM:"There is an end to what I'm doing. I see the end, and I even talk about it on Antichrist Superstar. I have certain goals and certain expectations to achieve before I plan on setting down my Mic-stand." The NUMBER 3 Coincidence that keeps showing up.
--Number 3 - Kerrang Magazine December 14 1996 MM:"Things like, people saying the new album would debut at number one on the Billboard Charts in the U.S. and I said, "No it's gonna be number Three." Because Number 3 is a very powerful number on the album. It's repeated quite often. Then it did chart an Number 3. Was it a coincidence you decide. If your in touch with your subconscious, you can really use it to your advantage."
--Number 3 - Guitar School Magazine MM:"The way we wrote Antichrist Superstar but this was very focused and it came from a very specific place in our minds. Twiggy and I were in tune with one another. Pogo too for that matter. The core writing was us 3, and the number 3 occurs a lot on the record. In numerology there's a lot of significance to the number 3. It's traditionally a very powerful number."
--3 Monkeys - Zine September 24 1994 - 1994 MM:"On portrait of an American family, I don't know, it's some weird kind of Trinity of the Monkey on the album that I haven't even figured out yet. I realized after the album was already out that the monkey occurs 3 times in 3 different songs. And just by coincidence, that picture under the CD (inside the case) has three monkeys on it. There's something there to be discovered. I just can't say what.
--Marilyn Manson - Mmslgrl Interview TR:"They saw us as something powerful. They found a bad guy, so they latched on. Our band riles people up, gets their people back into religion."
--Personal Morality - MTV Europe December 10 1996 MM:"Well strangely enough, a lot of my ideals are Christian in a sense but it's just I don't like the way that religion is Portrayed in America. I think the album really expresses, you know, how I feel. I mean it's based on individuality."
--The Albums Shock LOGO, Lightning Bolt - Acsuperstar - Jesus: Luke 10(18) "I beheld Satan as Lightning fall from heaven."
--Shocking - Metal Edge Magazine MM:"We've always found that with people being so desensitized, things have to be really shocking and have to punch you in the face to get your attention. Then once you've got their attention. You can say something they might remember."
--Failure - Metal Edge Magazine MM:"I fear being like everybody I hate, I fear failure, I fear losing control. I love balancing between chaos and control with everything I do. I always have a fear of going one way or another, getting lost in something, or losing everything to get lost in. And I fear being a completely acceptable sheep in society."
--Stepping up - Metal Edge Magazine MM:"I'm tired of things being so wishy washy and nobody standing up and saying, OK, this is where we're going to go. I just want to stand up and assert myself as the antichrist that America so fears. Instead of living in fear of something. I've decided to become that which everybody fears."
--Hiding things - Metal Edge Magazine MM:"I speak in reality. I don't try and hide anything from anybody, and that's the most dangerous thing about our music that parents are so afraid of. It has nothing to do with any violent implications, or the sexual implications, it's just the overall picture that I'm speaking of the world I see, and not hiding anything from anybody."
--Love and Hate - Metal Edge Magazine MM:"The opposite of love is apathy, and hate is really the same as love. If you're so consumed by hatred for someone, you might as well be loving them, because you're thinking about them for the same amount of time."
--Sins - Circus Magazine - May 1997 TR:"Christianity, like most religions, works with fear. Sins can be confessed and you are 'Clean again' and can start to sin again without thinking about your old sins. We believe that people should ask themselves why they sinned. They should show some responsibility." Question:"But you present a rather sinful image onstage. TR:"We have our own religion and some parts of it are even identical with some Christian beliefs. Going to confession and being "Clean" afterwards is not our idea of how it should work. It helps people to avoid responsibility. I think everybody is always responsible for what they do and everybody should accept that responsibility.
--Lucifer - Kerrang Magazine December 14 1996 MM:"There's a lot of great stories and a lot of great values in the Holy Bible, and I actually relate to a lot of them. The character, the idea, or the part of my personality that I describe as Antichrist Superstar, is a lot like Lucifer in the Bible. Someone who was kicked out of heaven because he wanted to be God. I try to say in my own story. Well if it was told from his point of view, then would he still be the bad guy?"
--Winner is God - Details Magazine December 1996 MM:"It's just that history was written by winners. In the Bible's case, the winner is God."
--Twiggy do you ever read the Bible? TR:"Yes, I like Revelations. There's some good chapters."
--Do you care? TR:"Yes, I care, but I think that people think we're contributing to the decline of America. I see us actually helping. I think we're raising a lot of kids whose parents aren't raising them."
--Marilyn Manson - Huh Magazine October 1996 MM:"It's a band, but it's me. It's almost as mystifying as the Holy Trinity, where it's three but it's one. I always thought it was necessary that everybody I work with is a part of and believing in the things I'm trying to relate. I heard this album as finished. I heard it in dreams I had. And that's what it is now. It was like the Revelations of John The Baptist or something."
--Dark Forces MM:"There are definitely Dark Forces out there that none of us fully understand. People fear what they don't understand, and lash out against it."
--Very American - Axcess Magazine MM:"There's a lot of talk in some of the other versions of the Bible, the Hebrew versions, and things about the end of the world not being a punishment from God, but being an invitation from mankind. That mankind has to invite its own destruction. And I think that's very true, and it's almost very American. I think that's the type of society we're in and it's people's very fear of the Antichrist that has created it."
--The Worm - Hit Parader Magazine February 1997 MM:"The worm represents something very biblical. In the book of Revelations, there's a lot of different references. The worm has also been compared to the character in the bible known as Lucifer, the fallen angel. The worm is the first stage of growth, and then it grows some more, and goes through the wing process. At which case it becomes an angel."
--Twiggy: What do you see as the purpose of the band? TR:"Someone's got to raise the kid's out there, because if their parents raise them, they're going to end up like us."
--Part of my shock - Spin Magazine March 1997 MM:"People are very surprised to hear me say that a lot of my values are Christian values. I think that's part of my shock. I just don't like the way that Christianity combined with the influence of Television has bred a nation of weakness."
--Starting over - CMJ January 1996 MM:"In explaining things to people, I've come to terms with the fact that a lot of my goals are very Christian in the end. Because people no longer appreciate the taboos of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. I have to take them as far as they've ever been taken before, on a grand scale, in order for the world to realize we have to start over. It's very much like the mythology of the bible, the end of the world, and the antichrist and people are made to make a choice about their faith. I think certain elements of that are correct."
--End of the world TR:"I think everything is gonna go out with a Bang. Whether that means the end of the world or the end of Marilyn Manson. The end of a lot of the world as Marilyn Manson sees it. It could mean the end of a lot of things. Christian America has already created and is already creating The Antichrist just by believing in the Bible. They are paving their own way to the end of the world, which is very poetic. My hero's are TV evangelists. They're the smartest guys, because they have something to live for, whether it's a lie or not. Everything is full of crap. What's real? What's fake? What makes sense? You could drive yourself crazy. I think once the end of the world does come, then we want to take everyone's children. The next step will be to try to convert them back. We bounce back and forth between the extremities of good and evil and we end up most of the time in the gray area."
--Final Thrill - Rolling Stone Magazine January 23 1997 MM:"Every once in a while, I'll step out onto the balcony and think about jumping. I'll think, is this the final thrill, because I'm numb to everything else. But I feel I have more to accomplish. I think I have a lot more in store that people won't really expect."
--Contradiction - Raygun Magazine Dec/January 1998 MM:"The only way you can deal with it, especially for me, is through the Paradox, and that has always been the basis for Marilyn Manson, is the extreme contradiction. Antichrist Superstar was a metaphor for my plan of becoming a Superstar by going against the grain, by doing it all the wrong way. And also the idea that everything that I aimed to destroy with music- break down the idiocy of Christianity and things like that- by doing so, I'm just creating another form of it through rock music. I tried to point it out to people. And maybe they don't get that part of it. But maybe they should and maybe they shouldn't. The part of the show where I stand at the podium and I have the banners come down, and I'm mocking Christianity and Simultaneously mocking myself, mocking a rock show, and people are chearing and pumping their fists to it- that in itself is just a great statement. Whether anyone understands it at all, it doesn't matter. The fact that it occurs is just a piece of work that I'll look back on someday and think, "Wow, how did I manage that?" and be proud of it.
--Belief - Raygun Magazine Dec/January 1998 MM:"I think that there is a collective disbelief in God nowadays, and it just needs to be massaged. I'm not against God. I'm against the Misuse of God, and the victimization of people through Guilt and these ideas of Sin. Cause Christianity is really responsible for Consumerism. The idea of Blind Faith has really ruined America in some ways, because there's this underlying theme of fascism that nobody's willing to accept. We're being controlled by our own stupidity and weaknesses. You turn on the TV, and if you don't buy this type of shampoo, you're not going to get laid, or if you don't buy this car, your friends aren't gonna accept you, and all of your friends are making fun of you behind your back because you have acne. It just eats away at your Soul. It makes you so dependent that you're scared to make your own decisions."
--Flat World - Raygun Magazine Dec/January 1998 MM:"Reality is just what's popular. At one point, the world was flat, and we were all convinced of that, because that was what was popular. Right now, in America, everyone is convinced that this is One Nation Under God; its on the Dollar Bill. And there's been so many people that tried to crack that open. An Antichrist is someone who is just fighting for man. Even in the Bible, the word Antichrist never really defined some villain who was going to come at the end of the world and destroy everyone. The word was used to describe someone who was opposed to Jesus in his day; it was a collective Disbelief in God.
--Next Album - Houston Chronicle April 4, 1998 (About Mechanical Animals) MM:"We're trying for the rawness and sincerity of the Stooges, early Pink Floyd. And the perspective is more in keeping with the way I've felt since writing the book. It's about a person who's been away from the world for a long time and returns. Like Edward Scissorhands or something from '70s science fiction. About how it's quite hard to fit in once you've been exiled."
--Stages of Progress - Houston Chronicle April 4, 1998 MM:"I started from an innocent point of view, went into hating everything. I left the regular world. I became desensitized, uncaring, thinking that nothing mattered. That was the final goal: I had to do that to become sane or whole. Which is where I am now, kinda at the beginning again."
--Raising Conversations - Houston Chronicle April 4, 1998 MM:"Once I assumed the role as a villain, the whole thing stopped being about music. I had started out just exploring something, and pretty soon it was having this effect in politics and culture. It raised conversations in families and churches."
--Example - Houston Chronicle April 4, 1998 MM:"If I can be an example at all, it's in the direction of raising kids with intelligence."
--Black Clothes - Houston Chronicle April 4, 1998 MM:"I'm tired of Goth. I threw out all my black clothes. You're never gonna see me wear black again."