• 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.
• About singer Prince: He reeks of lavender. It turned me on, actually.
• With the crucifixes I was exorcising the extremes that my upbringing dwelt on. Putting them up on the wall and throwing darts at them. And the "Boy Toy" thing was a joke, a tag name given to me when I first arrived in New York because I flirted with the boys. All the graffiti artists wore their nicknames on their belt buckles.
• Catholicism is not a soothing religion. It's a painful religion. We're all gluttons for punishment.
• It is difficult to believe in a religion that places such a high premium on chastity and virginity.
• When I get down on my knees, it is not to pray.
• I would like to see the Pope wearing my T-shirt.
• I loved nuns when I was growing up. I thought they were beautiful. For several years I wanted to be a nun. I saw them as really pure, disciplined, above average people. They had these serene faces. Nuns are sexy
• I think that life is a paradox and you have to embrace that in your work and your belief systems ... you can't be a literalist, and that's the trouble that people always find themselves in. That's why people always hit a wall with any of my stuff, because you can't take it literally.
• The fact of the matter is that you can use your beauty and use your charm and be flirtatious, and you can get people interested in your beauty. But you cannot maintain that. In the end, talent is the only thing. My work is the only thing that's going to change any minds.
• I love horses. I think I may have been one of Henry VIII’s knights in another life, riding through a great forest.
• Listen, everyone is entitled to my opinion.
• I don't care anymore if people dress like me, now I want them to think like me.
• If I was a girl again, I would like to be like my fans, I would like to be like Madonna.
• Better to live one year as a tiger, then a hundred as sheep.
• I never wish I had a different life. I am lucky to be in the position of power that I am in and to be intelligent.
• Being blonde is definitely a different state of mind. I can't really put my finger on it, but the artifice of being blonde has some incredible sort of sexual connotation. Men really respond to it. I love blonde hair but it really does something different to you. I feel more grounded when I have dark hair, and I feel more ethereal when I have light hair. It's unexplainable. I also feel more Italian when my hair is dark.
• There are moments when I can't believe I'm as old as I am. But I feel better physically than I did 10 years ago. I don't think, Oh God, I'm missing something.
• 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've always wanted to be taller. I feel like a shrimp, but that's the way it goes. I'm five-foot four-and-a-half-inches -- that's actually average. Everything about me is average. Everything's normal, in the books. It's the things inside me that make me not average.
• It's not my nature to just kick back.
• I think passive beauties have their place in the world. It's hard for me to relate to that.
• People think they will wake up one day and I'll be gone. But I'm never going away.
