Lady Gaga

I’d rather be poor and happy than rich and alone.

I want women -- and men -- to feel empowered by a deeper and more psychotic part of themselves. The part they're always trying desperately to hide. I want that to become something that they cherish.

When people say 'marriage' to me... It's always a means to an end. Everyone's so in a rush to define the relationship.

My fans are who I am. You give meaning to my life. You will never know the connection I feel to you.

cause it's a hard life, with love in the world. and i'm a hard girl, loving me is like chewing on pearls.

Music changed my life. I don't know who I would be without it. Don't ignore even the smallest glimmer of passion in your soul, run towards it with everything you have. It could change your life.

The kindness that's been shown to me, by doctors as well as my family and my friends, it's really saved my life.

I love my daddy. My daddy's everything. I hope I can find a man that will treat me as good as my dad.

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

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.

I began singing in dive bars and really small clubs. I dragged my piano down the stairs, and I went down the street with my keyboard, and I would go to every different dive bar that I could get to agree to let me play. I'd call and pretend I was Lady Gaga's manager.

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

I was always trying - I never wanted to let my fans down; I always wanted them to see me in my art form.

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.

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.

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.

Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history... this is what makes you strong. It's not looking out that's going to do that - it's looking in.

I think women love very hard. We love men. We just love with everything we have. And sometimes, I don't know that that love is met with the type of dignity that we wish it would be met with.

Art is going to make a bigger comeback than ever. That's the upside to things getting challenging.

Stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves; its your responsibility

There's this idea that it's all natural, but everything's been staged to look natural. It is also an invention. It's just that my inventions are different. I often get asked about my artifice, but isn't fashion based on the idea that we can create a fantasy?