Top 100 Quotes

I've been actually really very pleased to see how much awareness was raised around bullying, and how deeply it affects everyone. You know, you don't have to be the loser kid in high school to be bullied. Bullying and being picked on comes in so many different forms.

Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show.

The dieting wars have got to stop.

I actually don't want a throne at all, because I don't view myself as a queen; I view myself as one of my fans.

I think that once you've had a few No. 1s in your career that you've kind of proven yourself, and I don't feel the need to prove anything anymore.

I'm definitely a Polaroid camera girl. For me, what I'm really excited about is bringing back the artistry and the nature of Polaroid.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

I've been searching for ways to heal myself, and I've found that kindness is the best way.

I am the center of attention in my job every single day; the thought of a wedding to me is exhausting. Why would I put myself through that?

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.

When I heard 'Jesus, Take the Wheel,' I was like, OK. Some people look at it as a song written for an American Idol, Carrie Underwood, who is wonderful. But when you're a songwriter listening to a song, you hear something else. I heard that song, and wow.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they're not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don't care about money, and that's not my problem.

I don't see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way - artistically.

I wanted to only create a great perfume, not any perfume that would sell, but a great artistic one that the fans would not feel cheated by.

I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night.

I like black because it is a vacant space.

I think tolerance and acceptance and love is something that feeds every community.

Being beautiful is not so fun when you're in a business with all men.

I believe in the spirit of equality and the spirit of this country as one of love and compassion and kindness.

When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.

If you only believe that you're an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that's quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

Well, 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.

I work all day, do research, sketch my ideas, prepare for performances.

I want my fans to love themselves. It's almost like I want to hypnotize them so when they hear my music they love themselves instantly.

In a sense I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny.

I don't see myself as ever being like anybody else.

I was very depressed when I was 19... I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me.

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

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I'm really not worth being called an artist at all.

I think that promoting insecurity in the form of plastic surgery is infinitely more harmful than an artistic expression related to body modification.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, 'What kind of music do you make?', and you say, 'Pop music.' You may as well have 'I'm not cool' stamped on your forehead.

Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race or religion or nationality or sexual orientation or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us.

Don't say I hate institutionalised religion - rather than saying I hate those things, which I do not, what I'm saying is that perhaps there is a way of opening more doors, rather than closing so many.

In terms of my involvement in 'don't ask, don't tell' and marriage equality and anti-bullying and social emotional learning in schools - these are all things that arise out of my relationship with the world and with my fans.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

The only big things I've purchased are my dad's heart valve and a Rolls-Royce for my parents, for their anniversary. And that was only because my dad had a Lady Gaga license plate on our old car and it was making me crazy because he was getting followed everywhere, so I bought him a new car.

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

I think what's important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.

I've had faith my whole life that there was someone looking out for me, a spirit guide, a soul guide.

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.

Fashion is that thing that saved me from being sad.

Joanne' is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

My father opened a restaurant. It's so amazing... it's so freaking delicious, but I'm telling you I gain five pounds every time I go in there.

As soon as I go out into the world, I belong, in a way, to everyone else. It's legal to follow me. It's legal to stalk me at the beach. And I can't call the police or ask them to leave.

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 always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to.

I allow myself to fail. I allow myself to break. I'm not afraid of my flaws.

I am not some goddess that dropped down from the sky to sing pop music; I am not some extra-incredible human person that needs to be told how wonderful they are all day and kissed.

We are not actually equal - humanity - if we are not allowed to freely love one another.

I had this dream, and I really wanted to be a star. And I was almost a monster in the way that I was really fearless with my ambitions.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love.

In case you're wondering whether I lip synch, the answer is no... people think so because I sound so good.

I've suffered through depression and anxiety my entire life.

People want to tear me down, they were going to knife me anyway.

I miss people. I miss going anywhere and meeting a random person and saying 'Hi' and having a conversation about life. I love people.

If I decide to make a coat red in the show, it's not just red, I think: is it communist red? Is it cherry cordial? Is it ruby red? Or is it apple red? Or the big red balloon red?

I always say, you gotta play a dive bar like you play an arena, and you play an arena like you play a dive bar.

My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.

A record deal doesn't make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

I just genuinely feel that that's what you do when you're an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it's not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they're totally one and the same. I'm always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

I'm doing everything that I can, working with experts, really studying the statistics to figure out a way we can make it cool or normal to be kind and loving.

So there's nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who's cool hates - and then making it cool.

It's hard knowing who to trust with your personal life. When you cry in your room at night, you don't always know who to call. So I am very close to my family.

I do yoga, I do Bikram and I run, and I eat really healthy.

I went to see 'Phantom of the Opera' with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music... Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time - the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go - that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

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

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don't know how to manage it.

The reason that I'm here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That's my truth.

I am a walking piece of art every day, with my dreams and my ambitions forward at all times in an effort to inspire my fans to lead their life in that way.

To this day, some of my closest friends say, 'Gaga, you know, everything's great. You're a singer; your dreams have come true.' But, still, when certain things are said to you over and over again as you're growing up, it stays with you and you wonder if they're true.

All the awards in the world, you can get into all the nightclubs, they'll send you the nicest clothes. Nothing better than walking into your dad's restaurant and seeing a smile on his face and knowing that your mom and dad and your sister are real proud of you.

I want a baby from an Italian - possibly Sicilian - donor.

Making your dad happy is - especially for an Italian Catholic girl, I'll tell you - it feels really good.

In fact, my courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of 'Who do you think you are?'

I have to be on such a strict diet constantly.

I went to a lovely school, and I got an incredible education. And I actually think that my education is what really sets me apart, 'cause I'm very smart.

You shouldn't have to have money to have a luxury fragrance.

What I've learned is that you really don't need to be a celebrity or have money or have the paparazzi following you around to be famous.

My mom and I are very close.

No press, no television. If my mom calls and says, 'Did you hear about?' I don't want to know nothing about anything that is going on in relation to music. I shut it all off.

I don't think I could think of a single thing that's more isolating than being famous.

I don't like Los Angeles. The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I'm from New York. I will kill to get what I need.

I don't think I could live without hair, makeup and styling, let alone be the performer I am. I am a glamour girl through and through. I believe in the glamorous life and I live one.

I'm really happy and had such an amazing time performing at Super Bowl - wish I could relive it all over again.

My next baby will be my new record.

I hope that what you take away from my album is not just the music - which I did want to be fun, and I did want it to be about individuality, but please also take away from it that there's no dream that's too big.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

I'm confident in who I am. I've come to a place in my life where I've accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That's just the way I've always tried to be. It didn't change when I became a star.

The fashion I've acquired over the years is so sacred to me - from costumes to couture, high fashion to punk wear I've collected from my secret international hot spots. I keep everything in an enormous archive in Hollywood.

I got a job when I was 15 because my allowance was about $20 a week which in New York was impossible. So I used to waitress across the street from where I grew up.

No matter how much you rehearse on that stage, once you add 30,000 screaming people with flashing cameras into the equation, it's pretty intense.

I love being able to be political without any political affiliation.

My audience went, 'Wait, why is she singing jazz? What's going on?' And then they went, 'Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.' And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

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.

My apartment is my stage, and my bedroom is my stage - they're just not stages you're allowed to see.

I'm not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.