Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

Our enemy, the devil, wants to control us, and his target is our will. The main way he tries to influence our will is through lying to us.

I can’t deny that label-support gave me a leg up – though not every successful artist needs it.

One element of Madonna’s career that really takes center stage is how many times she’s reinvented herself. It’s easier to stay in one look, one comfort zone, one musical style. It’s inspiring to see someone whose only predictable quality is being unpredictable.

I do not see myself as a celebrity or an icon or things like that… I have not really done anything.

The Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn’t allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.

Had I pursued my education long enough to learn all the conventional dos and don’ts of starting a business, I often wonder how different my life and career might have been.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

I’ve always loved black culture; I don’t know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone. I’m older – I’m in my early 50s – so you’ll have to excuse me. That was always very exciting to me to connect to the culture on that level.

Becoming a writer is not a ‚career decision‘ like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you’re not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

Why should I be studying for a future that soon may not exist?

I listen to music all day every day. I can’t not listen to music. It’s kind of scary how much I listen to music, but it’s what I love, and it’s all I care about, so I’m good with it.

The first rap CD that I had, it was so different for me. The energy, the wordplay, all that caught my attention, and I liked it.

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

I’m a child of God first. Before I became a celebrity, I was baptized a Christian.

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.

People are used to music that justifies street culture but something that’s not touched on is why these kids act the way they act, live the way they live.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

When the external factors over which one has no control in a way start to become negative, it starts to affect our creative juices.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.

Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career.

It doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‚nirvana‘ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I’d listen to Italian music.

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people’s lives.

Music is in my DNA!

I think music is something that can, and should, be used to get you into different things because eventually what goes up must come down – we’re not going to be the number one group in the world forever – so you have to have something else to fall back on.

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

When you work with kids, especially, you want to be ready to turn the camera on at a moment’s notice.

When you listen to Ray Charles, there’s never any doubt whose voice that is.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

Puerto Rico’s relationship with music is everything. It’s an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music.

There are certain sounds that I’ve found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.

When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band – or at least in a Pixies cover band.

I am who I am today because of my mother.

I love my job, but it’s more than that: I need it.

I would love to get Rihanna on a Khaled song. That’s my friend, but every time I’m around her, I get shy.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that’s very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

I’m a painter in sound.

Everyone I look up to is bringing me into the tech world. You’d be surprised by all the music people in it, invested in it.

When I was 8 years old, it mattered what my favorite singer said and wore and expressed opinions about.

Shakespeare – I was very influenced – still am – by Shakespeare. I couldn’t believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.

Until it’s on the radio or online, it’s not real. With U2, our album isn’t finished until it’s in the stores.

One often makes music to supplement one’s world.

I was very camera shy. People like hot girls, so I put my music to hot girls and it just became a trend. The whole ‚enigmatic artist‘ thing, I just ran with it. No one could find pictures of me.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

Madonna and I are very different. Just saying. We’re very different. I wouldn’t make that comparison at all, and I don’t mean to disrespect Madonna: she’s a nice lady, and she’s had a fantastic, huge career – biggest pop star of all time.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

The idea of going to school and getting a job is the most destructive one in your brain.

The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.