"Not only does society suffer from racism and sexism but it also suffers from ageism. Once you reach a certain age you're not allowed to be adventurous, you're not allowed to be sexual. I mean, is there a rule? Are you supposed to just die?"

""When I experienced what was going on first hand, I just got sucked into the whole thing. Thank God I did. I met some amazing people and, hopefully, I’ve changed the lives of a lot of children. Just as important, I think it’s been an incredible growing and learning experience for me." (About her work in Malawi)."

"One is that we are all responsible for our actions, our behavior, and our words, and we must take responsibility for everything we say and do. When you get your head wrapped around that, you can no longer think of life as a series of random events - you participate in life in a way you didn't previously. I am the architect of my destiny. I am in charge. I bring that to me, or I push that away. You can no longer blame other people for things that happened to you. The other is that there is order in the universe, even though it looks like chaos. We separate the world into categories: this is good and this is bad. But life is set up to trick us. It's a series of illusions we invest in. And ultimately those investments don't serve our understanding, because physicality is always going to let you down, because physicality doesn't last."

"If we can elect an African American as president, we can support gay marriage! Defeat prop 8! We will not give up!"

"This is a historical evening. This is fucking important evening... We are lucky to be sharing it with each other. This is the beginning of a whole new world. Open your fucking head!"

"I must have been Japanese in a previous life. I'm pretty sure I was a warrioress. I can't explain it, I just know. I'm good at fighting - fighting with a big sword."

"Fame is a by-product. Fame is something that should happen because you do work that speaks to people and people want to know about your work. Unfortunately the personality of people has taken over from the work and the artistry and it's this thing now that stands on its own. I don't think one should ever aspire to being famous."

"I've always known that Catholicism is a completely sexist, repressed, sin- and punishment-based religion."

"Phallic symbols. You know Catholics. I used to draw people naked all the time in my art class and my nun teachers used to tell me I had to put clothes on them. So I just drew lines around their bodies. See-through clothes."

"She never had public favor; it was a bit like the Hillary Clinton thing. She did all the right things for her country, but she wasn't ultimately revered. So she had a conversation with her confidant-adviser. She asked him, when have they ever looked up to or idolized a woman? Only one, he told her, the Virgin Mary. So she said, Then I will become like the Virgin Mary, and she did. She created a facade for herself; she stopped having lovers; she became like a virgin. She became sexless, and painted her face in a white alabaster way, and turned herself into an icon that was untouchable and sexless, and then she had everybody's respect."

"I'm not interested in being Wonder Woman in the delivery room. Give me drugs."

"I liked my body growing up and I wasn't ashamed of it. I liked boys and didn't feel inhibited by them. Maybe it comes from having brothers and sharing a bathroom. The boys got the wrong impression of me at high school. They mistook forwardness for promiscuity. When they don't get what they want, they turn on you. I went through this period when all the girls thought I was loose and the boys said I was a nymphomaniac. The first boy I ever slept with was my boyfriend and we'd been going out a long time."

"I have the most perfect belly button. When I stick my fingers in it, I feel a nerve in the center of my body shoot up my spine."

"I wanted to be a boy when I was growing up because I was in love with all of the male dancers I knew and they were all gay. And I thought, Well, if I was a boy, they'd love me. So I got into role-playing then. That's where it began. I remember when I was still in high school, I had cut my hair off really short, and I was totally anorexic - I had no boobs - and I would dress like a boy and go to gay clubs and my goal was to trick men into thinking I was a boy."

"I'm tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay."

"I just like the idea of pills. I like to collect them but not actually take them. When I fell off my horse, I got tons of stuff: Demerol and Vicodin and Xanax and Valium and Oxycontin, which is supposed to be like heroin. And I'm quite scared to take them. I'm a control freak."

"I love horses. I think I may have been one of Henry VIII’s knights in another life, riding through a great forest."

"Better to live one year as a tiger, than a hundred as sheep."

"A lot of people are just really confused by me; they don’t know what to think of me, so they try to compartmentalize me or diminish me. Maybe they just feel unsafe. But any time you have an overtly emotional or irrational, negative reaction to something, you’re fearing something that it’s bringing up in you."

"Now there's no point in placing the blame And you should know I'd suffer the same"