I never wanted to be Marilyn – it just happened. Marilyn’s like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane.

Developing nations want to become developed nations.

We were old sinners – but when we came to Christ we are not sinners anymore.

We are going to transform Britain’s rail system from the worst in the world to the best. If you can do a few things like that, when the body gives out, you can say you’ve lived a good life.

Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

My connection with Brazil is so abstract. My blood and my way of thinking is Brazilian, but that’s it. I don’t tend to go back to the past, and although I have an apartment there, I rarely visit. When I move, I really move.

It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

We’re so trendy we can’t even escape ourselves.

Sometimes, you might meet somebody that you love that’s turning into a ‚they.‘ My key is invite them to Miami and take them to the ocean and let them jump off the boat in the ocean, on the sand bar, and cleanse off and pray and then go take a shower, and hopefully the ‚they‘ is out of you.

If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.

Transformation literally means going beyond your form.

Change in all things is sweet.

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

There was my name up in lights. I said, ‚God, somebody’s made a mistake.‘ But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, ‚Remember, you’re not a star.‘ Yet there it was up in lights.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‚blackness‘ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.

Lady Gaga is my name. If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.

Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

I was probably the first footballer ever to have a pop-star profile, and my agent was right when he said we could put my name on stair rods and sell them to people in bungalows.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.

I don’t think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation. Or anything else by the way.

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.

When we enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, something wonderful happens: God begins to change our desires, and we want to be more like Him.

I’m not a star. I don’t feel I’m so great. So how can I make you feel great just because you’ve got my signature on a piece of paper?

We are in the throes of a transition where every publication has to think of their digital strategy.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

No one can say, ‚I have dropped out – I am no longer in the system.‘ When you’re in prison, you’re even closer to the system: you feel it more, and you might be in there for whatever reason. You don’t transform the system as an absolute thing.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

Proud 2 Pay – that’s something that distinguishes me, that’s something that defines me, and we’re going to keep that going.

My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing but also very strange because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.

You don’t have the same mentality as you did five years ago – even one year. People are always changing, and I believe that everyone deserves the space to change and for people to recognize their change.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

I think women want freedom. They want to be empowered. They want hope. They want love; they want all the things that I want, and I’m not afraid to say those things and act on them, and I think that’s why they identify with me.

Sometimes I’m fascinated with how famous my work could be while I’m not so famous.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

That is what fame is, isn’t it? To get the world to fall in love with you.

I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn’t.

I heard that when Christina Aguilera went back to her prom, people, like, booed her. I can’t imagine going through that. If you know that’s going to happen, why put yourself in that situation? I’d rather play for 20,000 screaming people, you know?

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

I wanted to be famous for my music and my talent, and I always wished I could cut it out when I left the stage.

I think sometimes celebrities get so big, they’re not reachable.

I went from being the Terminator to being the governator.

I cry so much less than I used to. I used to be one of the most teary people.

I love to watch times change!

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.