Lady Gaga

"I've got a hundred million reasons to walk away, But baby, I just need one good one to stay."

"I wanna be the girl under you (oh yeah) I wanna be your G.U.Y (yeah) I wanna be the grave and unearth you (oh yeah) Our sexes tell us no lies."

"I stand here waiting for you to bang the gong, to crash the critic saying Is it right or is it wrong? If only fame had an IV, Baby could I bear being away from you? I found the vein, put it in here."

"Tryin' to get control, Pressure's takin' its toll. Stuck in the middle zone, I just want you alone. My guessing game is strong, Way too real to be wrong. Caught up in your show, Yeah, at least now I know.It wasn't love, it wasn't love, It was a perfect illusion (Perfect illusion). Mistaken for love, it wasn't love, It was a perfect illusion (Perfect illusion). You were a perfect illusion."

"You're giving me a million reasons to let you go. You're giving me a million reasons to quit the show. You're givin' me a million reasons, Give me a million reasons, Givin' me a million reasons, About a million reasons.If I had a highway, I would run for the hills. If you could find a dry way, I'd forever be still. But you're giving me a million reasons, Give me a million reasons, Givin' me a million reasons, About a million reasons."

"There can be a hundred people in the room and ninety nine don't believe in you and just one person believes in you and it can change everything."

"She’s a nice girl – I just feel very honoured that she wanted to sing my song. I used to scream for her in Times Square and now I work for her. When I was 13 she was the most provocative performer of my time. I love her so much! Britney certainly doesn’t need any freakin’ tips from me! Britney Spears is the queen of pop. I was learning from her."

"Take My Picture, Hollywood! I Wanna Be a Star!"

"I'm not real. I'm theatre."

"God bless pop music and God bless MTV."

"Lake Como? One of my favorite places."

"Lake Como is like Saint-Tropez and Capri."

"Prejudice is a disease. So is fashion. But I will not wear prejudice."

"I think that fashion and music go hand-in-hand, and they always should. It's the artist's job to create imagery that matches the music... I think they're very intertwined."

"In my show I announce, ‘People say Lady Gaga is a lie, and they are right. I am a lie. And every day I kill to make it true.’"

"You listeners, the ones who found me first are, I believe, the future of great art thinkers. Because anyone that's found me now I really think is grabbing on to the ideas that I have, more than anything. It's about the music but it's also about the story. So thank you guys for loving and reading the story and being as into it and as passionate as I am."

"I operate from a place of delusion-that’s what the Fame is all about... I want people to walk around delusional about how great they can be - and then to fight so hard for it every day that the lie becomes the truth."

"I've gone bankrupt about four times now. Every dollar I earn goes on the show."

"You see, if I was a guy, and I was sitting here with a cigarette in my hand, grabbing my crotch and talking about how I make music because I like fast cars and fucking girls, you'd call me a rockstar. But when I do it in my music and in my videos, because I'm a female, because I make pop music, you're judgmental and you say that it is distracting... I'm just a rockstar."

"Grace Jones said this to me when I met her. I washed her feet, and I looked up at her and she said, "No matter what you do in your life, don’t you ever let anybody take your creative people away from you." And what my creative friends always remind me of is they say, "Only value the opinion of those that you respect. And anyone that you don’t respect, pay no mind to their opinion about you or anything else." And that’s how I live my life. If I worried about everything that everyone said, I would not be a good artist."

"That’s the most Warholian thing about what I do... I embrace pop culture. The very thing that everybody says is poisonous and ostentatious and shallow, it’s like my chemistry book... and I make what I believe to be art out of it."

"I don’t consider my own clothing to be outrageous... The truth is that people just don’t have the same references that I do. To me it’s very beautiful and it’s art, and to them it’s outrageous and crazy."

"They bring my music to life."

"Creativity for me is religious."

"Fame for me is not external, it’s internal. So I’ve been famous for a long time."

"I don't care what people think about me, I care what they think about themselves."

"It's always wrong to hate, but it's never wrong to love."

"The whole point of what I do-the Monster Ball, the music, the performance art aspect of it-I want to create a space for my fans where they can feel free and where they can celebrate because I didn't fit in in high school and I felt like a freak. So I like to create this atmosphere for my fans where they feel like they have a freak in me to hang with and they don't feel alone."

"Amidst all of these flashing lights I pray The Fame wont take my life."

"I am a feminist. I reject wholeheartedly the way we are taught to perceive women. The beauty of women, how a woman should act or behave. Women are strong and fragile. Women are beautiful and ugly. We are soft-spoken and loud, all at once. There is something mind-controlling about the way we're taught to view women. My work, both visually and musically, is a rejection of all those things. And most importantly a quest."

"Everybody wants me to show my vagina to the world. And the truth is, I don’t have to."

"It takes time to become myself every morning."

"She reinvents herself from album to album. I reinvent myself week to week. I get quite bored with things and I don't want to let down my fans."

"People think I'm unusual but it's just that we haven't had anyone like this since the Seventies."

"I've learned love is like a brick, you can build a house or sink a dead body."

"'Judas' is a metaphor and an analogy about forgiveness and betrayal and things that haunt you in your life, and how I believe that it's the darkness in your life that ultimately shines and illuminates the greater light that you have upon you. … Someone once said to me, 'If you have no shadows then you're not standing in the light.' So the song is about washing the feet of both good and evil, and understanding and forgiving the demons from your past in order to move into the greatness of your future … I just like really aggressive metaphors — harder, thicker, darker — and my fans do as well. So it is a very challenging and aggressive metaphor, but it is a metaphor.""

"Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you’re wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn't love you anymore."

"I had a boyfriend who told me I’d never succeed, never be nominated for a Grammy, never have a hit song and that he hoped I’d fail,[...] I said to him, ‘Someday, when we’re not together, you won’t be able to order a cup of coffee at the f—ing deli without hearing or seeing me."

"I refused to compromise and allow my talents to be monetized to the point that I don't want to be here anymore. I will quit if I am ever not allowed to be myself. I will be myself until they f—ing close the coffin, so that you can all be yourselves too."

"Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it."

"My real fans understand what it is I do, but on another level I have fans who just love my music and don’t know I write it and enjoy it shallowly — and that’s OK too. I think art and music should be just as powerful if you drink it shallow as if you drink it deep."

"You know, I have such an appreciation for where I am in my life because I've struggled and because I couldn't get signed, and because I couldn't get played on the radio, … There are times when it can be a lot to deal with but always when I get up in the morning I try to find that very joyful place that reminds me that I would die if someone took it all away. If someone did that I wouldn't be a person anymore."

"Right now the only thing that I am concerned with in my life is being an artist … I had to suppress it for so many years in high school because I was made fun of but now I'm completely insulated in my box of insanity and I can do whatever I like."

"My ideas about fame and art are not brand new … We could watch Paris is Burning, we could read The Warhol Diaries, we could go to a party in New York in 1973 and these same things would be being talked about. I guess you could say that I'm a bit of a Warholian copycat. Some people say everything has been done before, and to an extent they are right. I think the trick is to honour your vision and reference and put together things that have never been put together before. I like to be unpredictable, and I think it's very unpredictable to promote pop music as a highbrow medium."

"I don't want to see Bowie in a tracksuit. He never let anyone see him that way. The outlet for my work is not just the music and the videos, it's every breathing moment of my life. I'm always saying something about art and music and fame. That's why you don't ever catch me in sweatpants."

"I have found that my work has to be both deep and shallow … All of my songs have meaning, all of my clothing has iconography buried into it. But by the same token, it's just as special if you look at it in its shallowest form. A quick moment of melody, a beautiful dress. People think, "Gaga's so sweet", or "Gaga sucks". The point is that it's memorable. For commercial art to be taken seriously as fine art is a very unusual and difficult task. I think that a lot of people don't get it and a lot of people don't know what to make of me. And, you know what? I'm OK with that."

"I wanna roll with him a hard pair we will be. A little gambling is fun when you're with me (I love it). Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun. And baby when it's love if it's not rough it isn't fun, fun."

"I want your love and I want your revenge You and me could write a bad romance"

"And I know that it's complicated But I'm a loser in love. So baby raise a glass to mend All the broken hearts Of all my wrecked up friends.I'll never talk again. Oh boy you've left me speechless. You've left me speechless, so speechless."

"Just a second, It's my favorite song they're gonna play. And I cannot text you with A drink in my hand, eh. You shoulda made some plans with me, You knew that I was free. And now you won't stop calling me; I'm kinda busy."