I like pushing boundaries.
I'm not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.
Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.
I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we've all heard about before.
You shouldn't have to have money to have a luxury fragrance.
When people say 'marriage' to me... It's always a means to an end. Everyone's so in a rush to define the relationship.
Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, 'What kind of music do you make?', and you say, 'Pop music.' You may as well have 'I'm not cool' stamped on your forehead.
I'm working on bringing the instant film camera back as part of the future.
I don't like talking to celebrities.
I don't see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way - artistically.
I don't keep people around me that aren't family. You don't get to stay. Unless you're eating at the table with us, you're not part. We eat together, we cry together, we live together, we die together. Everything that we do is for each other, and we care for another.
Pop music will never be low brow.
I work very hard, but when God opens that door for you - when life opens that door for you, I should say - I think it's important to be giving, to return the love back.
Whether I'm wearing lots of makeup or no makeup, I'm always the same person inside.
I actually don't want a throne at all, because I don't view myself as a queen; I view myself as one of my fans.
The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.
I was very depressed when I was 19... I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me.
I got a job when I was 15 because my allowance was about $20 a week which in New York was impossible. So I used to waitress across the street from where I grew up.
Then, when I'm in these relationships with people who are also creative, or creative in their own way, what happens is the attraction is initially there and it's all unicorns and rainbows. And then they hate me.
I don't want to make niche-oriented music.
Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer.
My whole life is a theater piece.
I don't think that women need to smell interesting.
I wouldn't say that I am one of the greatest dancers, but I am really quite good at what I do.
History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.
I live in Hollywood, but you can't make me love Hollywood. I'll never love Hollywood.
It is very hard to not be able to engage with people in a real and honest way because they either want something from me, or they see me as something that I simply am not.
I think tolerance and acceptance and love is something that feeds every community.
Because the sweeter the cake, the more bitter the jelly can be.
Love is an interesting thing.
I went to see 'Phantom of the Opera' with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music... Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time - the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.
I think women love very hard. We love men. We just love with everything we have. And sometimes, I don't know that that love is met with the type of dignity that we wish it would be met with.
I really wanted to break the mold of what modern touring is right now.
We're not trying to make you less of a man. We just want you to love us as deeply and as wholesomely and as fully as we love you.
I've had faith my whole life that there was someone looking out for me, a spirit guide, a soul guide.
In order for me to be successful... In order to be a great artist - musician, actor, painter, whatever - you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.