An extraordinary diva would never sit by herself.

I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten - with art, but with no sense of identity.

I don't want to sound pompous, but I really think your gender doesn't necessarily dominate your sexual activity.

I never grew up with a mother's hand - that's why I will forever be insecure, I think, in that primal way.

I didn't have parents, so I lived in people's homes... And because I grew up with no parental role models, I learned to become my own friend, eventually my own father and my own mother.

I know people look at me and try to make conclusions about me immediately, based on the obvious, let's say.

I'm not involved with the female world.

I have not lived so abundantly, full of family, full of continuity and history.

If you come from a normal family, you immediately start playing the role of a boy, a girl a man or a woman, but I'm sure you'll agree with me that those are only roles, limited roles, at that.

I really need to be alone. I can't deal with someone sleeping next to me.

But as a woman, I really started feeling vulnerable on the set, and I really felt that it was important that I should not be open for invitation or making myself look as though I was waiting for something.

An extraordinary diva would never sit by herself.

I have no prejudice against male or female.

When I was preparing for the film for tree weeks, with David Cronenberg, I had a lady friend come over.

So, I lived at the Beijing Opera, I ate there, I learned a craft. And the money we made went into the company.

The beauty of it is when you can just show up and hit the notes.

I wasn't playing a drag queen - I was playing an extraordinary performer.

I am not well educated or bright enough to be politically clued in, but I hope in the film that I'm going to shock a few people, win a lot of people over.

The point I'm trying to make is, I'm really quite neutral. I have not been conditioned.

But I really want to be an artist, so therefore I have to live a little bit like a monk.

Writing helps me process things that are happening to me.

We say here that if you fall down in the United States, the ambulance man must feel for your wallet before he feels for your pulse.

I've known for years that you're supposed to be present. I know that thinking about what's happened or thinking about what I want is not going to get me anywhere, but until I quit doing it I'm not present.

Sometimes I feel a bit socially disconnected in terms of being a little bit gullible about how people interrelate emotionally.

But they fly. It is what fledged birds must do, and she's always known that. The nest can't always be full.

Publishers are very risk-averse, so they lean towards licenses and sequels. But the fact is that even those are not guaranteed hits. So, if 'playing it safe' does not guarantee hits, they might as well leave it up to the really creative, risk-taking people, because they couldn't do any worse.

Everyone looks so much better when they smile.

A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.

Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997 - the iPod came out 4 years later. 3 years after that is the first time his market cap grew. It took 7 years.

One of the extraordinary features of the Blair government has been its slavish support for the central tenets of Bush's foreign policy - above all, the war in Iraq. During the Cold War, the Wilson government resisted the suggestion that it should send troops to Vietnam.

You start to think in terms of making an album that might be greater than the sum of its parts. It's sort of like having a lot of footage and then editing it into something that will make sense to a viewer, you know. Sometimes it might involve even working on an older song that might complete that picture.

I've been a Democrat, I've been a Republican, and I eventually became an independent because I don't believe either party has a monopoly on good ideas or strong leadership.

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things.

It's a comforting thought to know that I've got my partner by my side walking through life and all the ups and the downs. I know we can handle it. There's nothing too big or too crazy that's going to tear us apart.

In marriage, someone has to be a giver and someone a taker. I am a taker who married a giver.

I don't worry too much about the script, I just ad lib, like Pearl Bailey.

Quite understandably, people think that if there's a six-year gap or whatever, that it's taken me six years to make the album. It's not really like that at all.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

I have no complaints with the whole childhood acting thing, because I wanted to do it.

When you are raised Catholic, there is one thing that you are confronted with at a young age, and that's death. You're confronted with all the big issues - and that sparks deep questions, like what the hell are we doing here, anyway?

Door: What a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.

Ive done a lot of self improvement. Im always working on being a better person.

The brain is a commodity used to fertilize ideas.