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

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.

Androgyny is not trying to manage the relationship between the opposites; it is simply flowing between them.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

I am playing with the assumptions that we have in our everyday life when we are tripped up or fooled and we learn something, that makes things exciting - I am having fun with that stuff, but you have to manage it so it doesn't get too cute, that's what I trying to work toward.

'Thou shalt not get found out' is not one of God's commandments; and no man can be saved by trying to keep it.

Well, I think that those of us in public life that are trying to do a good job, and that are faced with this popular new game that the media has of being critical of everything that anybody in public office does probably are thin-skinned.

When Frank the Pug is singing I Will Survive, the only reason it's funny is that Will is in that shot trying not to get angry. A shot of a dog singing I Will Survive on its own will not get a laugh.

I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.

Votes are like trees, if you are trying to build a forest. If you have more trees than you have forests, then at that point the pollsters will probably say you will win.

I'd been trying for all of the eight years we'd been married to have a child, and finally I did.

Yeah; I'm a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I'm in, we were always trying to make popular records.

Uhm, I'm the one wanting the lessons! I don't want to say too much about it because I'd rather have you see the movie, but he's trying to find his music.

So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.

I've always done food that can work in a set time frame. The message I'm trying to get across is, it doesn't have to take three days to do this. With planning, you can do a lot and really have quality food every day.

I meditate a lot, but I am constantly in pain. I'm trying to live with this. You just have to accept it.

I trained and trained and went up against Kurt, then being a world champion in '94, and after that I did Tommy's tour and then my tour and all this stuff and just trying to deal with it all. And now, I've just kind of backed off a little.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.

Trying to give back a little bit is important.

Intimacy comes from being yourself on the stage and making the audience feel, without trying, that you're sittin' down there with 'em, playing, and that can happen in a big hall, if you have a good audience that want to listen.

While advances in scientific research have led to some new and exciting treatments that have enlarged and enhanced the quality and length of human life, we must not lose sight as to what we are trying to accomplish.

Playing polo is like trying to play golf during an earthquake.

Orlando's a part of me. The next guy's a part of me. And the next guy's a part of me. That's all I'm trying to do, is tell cool stories that people can relate to.

In modelling, there is no point in trying to prove you have a brain, so why even bother? I'd sooner save the energy for something more meaningful.

I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.

I mean, I don't know anything else that I would try to do, but it's a very frustrating thing to do, because you are trying to take what's a fantasy in your head and make it live through the minds of 200 people.

My lyrics come from my experiences growing up in life, trying to find out and express who I am. That's basically it. I'm not trying to be a prophet or anything like that. I'm just reflecting on life.

My back to the goal, physically fighting off defenders, trying to bang my goals in, every week I have to do the business for this club. That's the life of a striker.

I enjoyed high school and college, and I think I learned a lot, but that was not really my focus. My focus was on trying to figure out what businesses to start.

I just have my own taste, and I just try and stick with that. I'm just trying to play as many characters as I can for as long as I have an opportunity to.

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.