Lady Gaga

I dropped out of NYU, moved out of my parent's house, got my own place, and survived on my own. I made music and worked my way from the bottom up.

I'm half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times. It's best not to ask questions and just enjoy.

As soon as I go out into the world, I belong, in a way, to everyone else. It's legal to follow me. It's legal to stalk me at the beach. And I can't call the police or ask them to leave.

It was my delusion and naivety that brought me here.

If you don't feel safe as a child, you can't learn.

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.

Im telling you a lie in a vicious effort that you will repeat my lie over and over until it becomes true.

I try to not focus on what people expect from me.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they're not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don't care about money, and that's not my problem.

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 don't know if I'm selfless - I still want to make a great record. I want to make a hit record. I want to tour; that's not completely selfless. But the truth is I'm not interested in people coming to my show for me as much as I am for them coming to my show for themselves. That's always been how I am.

Hair is about when you're younger. I am my hair.

There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.

The only big things I've purchased are my dad's heart valve and a Rolls-Royce for my parents, for their anniversary. And that was only because my dad had a Lady Gaga license plate on our old car and it was making me crazy because he was getting followed everywhere, so I bought him a new car.

Being beautiful is not so fun when you're in a business with all men.

I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night.

I know people said I wasn't selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you're talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.

Well, 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.

I have never had plastic surgery, and there are many pop singers who have.

I think tolerance and acceptance and love is something that feeds every community.

It's hard knowing who to trust with your personal life. When you cry in your room at night, you don't always know who to call. So I am very close to my family.

If I can be a leader, I will.

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.

Pop music will never be low brow.

How I love David Bowie.

I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point.

I'm drawn to bad romances.

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.

If you don't have any shadows you're not in the light.

It's honestly true that money means nothing to me.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

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 see myself as ever being like anybody else.

If you are not being bullied all I would say - cause I like to talk about the other side of it as well - is you know, be someone that nurtures, and if there's someone in your class that maybe doesn't have a lot of friends, be the person that sits with them in the cafeteria sometimes; be the bigger person.

I'm not a supermodel. That's not what I do. What I do is music. I want my fans to feel the way I do, to know what they have to offer is just as important, more important, than what's happening on the outside.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go - that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

To this day, some of my closest friends say, 'Gaga, you know, everything's great. You're a singer; your dreams have come true.' But, still, when certain things are said to you over and over again as you're growing up, it stays with you and you wonder if they're true.

We are not actually equal - humanity - if we are not allowed to freely love one another.

The dieting wars have got to stop.

In a sense I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny.

Our youth deserve a fair and hopeful future with government that values us equally.

I don't like celebrities; I don't hang out with them; I don't relate to that life.

Every video I'm in, every magazine cover, they stretch you; they make you perfect. It's not real life.

I don't like Los Angeles. The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I'm from New York. I will kill to get what I need.

Celebrity life and media culture are probably the most overbearing pop-cultural conditions that we as young people have to deal with, because it forces us to judge ourselves.

I feel that my fans have cultivated my talent and they continue to nurture me.

I want my fans to love themselves. It's almost like I want to hypnotize them so when they hear my music they love themselves instantly.

Glam culture is ultimately rooted in obsession and those of us who are truly devoted and loyal to the lifestyle of glamour are masters of its history. Or to put it more elegantly we are librarians.

Don't you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can't be exactly who you are.

I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song 'Radio Gaga.'

I very much want to inject gay culture into the mainstream. It’s not an underground tool for me. It’s my whole life.

I'm an inventor.

I spend my money on my props and my creations. I'm an inventor.

There is nothing Holy about hatred.

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.

I already am a product.

Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show.

I believe in the spirit of equality and the spirit of this country as one of love and compassion and kindness.

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.

People want to tear me down, they were going to knife me anyway.

When there's justice and change, you start to see the cleansing of the soul, and that is what I want for people, and I hope it's okay for me to say those things.

I just want my family to be safe. Because I am sometimes polarizing, I fear for their safety.

So there's nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who's cool hates - and then making it cool.

My apartment is my stage, and my bedroom is my stage - they're just not stages you're allowed to see.

I think that once you've had a few No. 1s in your career that you've kind of proven yourself, and I don't feel the need to prove anything anymore.

I'm half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

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'm doing everything that I can, working with experts, really studying the statistics to figure out a way we can make it cool or normal to be kind and loving.

I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don't live my life in the way someone like you does. I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans.

It sometimes makes people feel better about themselves, you know, to put other people down, or make fun of them, or maybe make mockery of their work and that doesn't make me feel good at all.

I'm confident in who I am. I've come to a place in my life where I've accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That's just the way I've always tried to be. It didn't change when I became a star.

I hope that what you take away from my album is not just the music - which I did want to be fun, and I did want it to be about individuality, but please also take away from it that there's no dream that's too big.

I am so excited to extend myself behind the scenes as a designer and to - as my father puts it - finally have a real job.

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.

Fashion is that thing that saved me from being sad.

Let the blood and the bruises define your legacy.

My father opened a restaurant. It's so amazing... it's so freaking delicious, but I'm telling you I gain five pounds every time I go in there.

I like black because it is a vacant space.

I love imperfections.

I remember watching the mascara tears flood the ivories and I thought, 'It's OK to be sad.' I've been trained to love my darkness.

Love is an interesting thing. Perhaps I've never been in love before - I don't really know? I think I have. I guess it's subjective in that way.

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.

I don't know that you can put a label on growth. I'm just me.

I wanted to get a job being creative, and I did.

I decided to pursue music, so I dropped out of school and I told my parents I didn't want any money from them. I got three jobs and I just hit the ground running.

I don't care about money.

I'm really happy and had such an amazing time performing at Super Bowl - wish I could relive it all over again.

I've worked since I was a five-year-old to be a performer.

Love is an interesting thing.

I just am committed wholeheartedly to theatre with no intermission.

When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.

I've had faith my whole life that there was someone looking out for me, a spirit guide, a soul guide.

I want kids. I want a soccer team, and I want a husband.

I do yoga, I do Bikram and I run, and I eat really healthy.

I am the center of attention in my job every single day; the thought of a wedding to me is exhausting. Why would I put myself through that?

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

I'm not a sandwich store that only sells turkey sandwiches. I sell a lot of different things.

I wouldn't say that I am one of the greatest dancers, but I am really quite good at what I do.

Don't say I hate institutionalised religion - rather than saying I hate those things, which I do not, what I'm saying is that perhaps there is a way of opening more doors, rather than closing so many.