“There comes a time whenyou haveto let yourclothesgo out in the world and try to make it on their own.”

I hope to keep entertaining in some way until I can’t physically entertain any longer. It’s what I was born to do, and I love this profession.

One of my first role models was Eugene Lang, a wealthy businessman who went back to his elementary school in East Harlem and addressed the sixth-grade class. He looked out at that sea of faces and said, “If any of you wants to go to college, I will pay for it.”

The inventor of the modern foundation garment that we women wear today was a German scientist and opera lover by the name of Otto Titsling.

There’s the media-driven universe, in which the public perceives you in a superficial way. Then there’s the universe that you actually inhabit, where you have to get up even if you didn’t sleep so well, and you feel like crap and your face is swollen.

I loved the photographs of people wearing elaborate makeup and costumes – they really pulled at me inside. I was in that library every week for years, until I was about 13. I had a rich interior life, because I didn’t have much of a social life.

People are not the best because they work hard. They work hard because they are the best.

The worst part of success is to try to find someone who is happy for you.

Just because people don’t meet you doesn’t mean they’re not out there breaking their asses trying to get around.

My idea of superwoman is someone who scrubs her own floors.

My parents have not insisted that we go to college, but she wanted us to learn. Teacher, librarian, secretary, nurse. All my siblings were employed. But I wanted to be the boss, an independent contractor.

Cherish forever what makes you unique, ‘cuz you’re really a yawn if it goes.

When I started in this [music] business, I had a dream, but it was amorphous, and I had no experience. I just had a fuzzy notion of what life would be like if I became what I pictured.

The only thing Madonna will ever do like a virgin is give birth in a stable.

Writing a book is not as tough as it is to haul thirty-five people around the country and sweat like a horse five nights a week.

Make sure your life is a rare entertainment! It doesn’t take anything drastic. You needn’t be gorgeous or wealthy or smart, just very enthusiastic!

I’m the last of the truly tacky women. I do trash with flash and sleaze with ease.

I’m trying my hardest to get you so wrapped up in me you never leave.

Please stop trying to make me the ghost of your past lover.

I don’t generally derive my stories from novels. I try to turn into film things I have felt or experienced.

I’m trying to make myself let you go before Ms. Mary comes to get you, but you go and shiver at my touch and weaken my resolve to stop holding you.

We’re all different and I respect my difference. I just try to be myself at all times. As long as I do that my music is always going to be different.

Listen to me, Blaire. If you try to go anywhere I will chase you down. I will become your shadow.

I’m really focused on These Days and I’m trying to take it as far as I can – I feel like it’s a strong body of work. I just want to give it the ame kind of attention I give all my projects.

Sometimes it’s very hard to turn off my brain especially when I have an eighteen hour day. I try to stop working by 10 or 11pm but you know sometimes there is nothing I can do about it.