"I'm an old English major from way back, so I do have fun tearing apart texts and trying to find the hidden secrets and the subtexts in there."

"I am heat obsessed. I crave the heat in my bedroom."

"I understand that if I really need my hair to be nice, now I hire someone to do it, and I understand that putting on a pair of heels really makes a difference."

"Dick Clark was a really great influence in my career; he helped me a lot with his whole organization, and they were awesome to me at all different points - but one thing that I really disagreed with him on was when he said that what I do, pop music, is a disposable art form."

"I do have a lot of difficulty figuring out what I want to be working on, but what's the alternative? To be one of those people who has a million things they want to do, and then never does any of them? And then where will you be?"

"I have a hard time doing anything someone else tells me to do! I've always been driven to follow my own path and not be pushed down another lane because some executive thought I could be more commercially successful or whatever."

"I've always wondered what it would be like if somebody from outer space landed with three heads. Then all of a sudden everybody else wouldn't look so bad, huh? Well, OK you're a little different from me but, hey, ya got one head."

"I get the greatest feeling when I'm singing. It's other-worldly. Your feet are anchored into the Earth and into this energy force that comes up through your feet and goes up the top of your head and maybe you're holding hands with the angels or the stars, I have no idea."

"I come from a line of great Sicilian women, and their mentality is to endure and push through to the other side."

"You can laugh when I talk, but not when I sing."

"I never had a rivalry with Madonna. You don't knock another sister, ever. There's room for everybody on this planet; you don't have to be like anyone else."

"Understand where it is you want to go. Then picture yourself there. If you can picture yourself there, then you can be there. Bottom line."

"I'm not gonna worry about what people think about me. I'm too busy. I don't give a hoot."

"I absolutely refuse to reveal my age. What am I - a car?"

"My torso is short, but my arms are really long and gangly and my legs and my neck, and my feet and hands are really long, and I look like a duck."

"When I perform on stage, I often pretend to be someone other than myself to bring a certain emotion or intent to a song."

"You always have to remember - no matter what you're told - that God loves all the flowers, even the wild ones that grow on the side of the highway."

"You know, I've been playing with my hair color ever since I was nine."

"People can save the world by the way they think and by the way they behave and what they hold to be important."

"Everything does go in a circle."

"Humour is a great vehicle for getting a message across. If you get too serious, you could die of starch."

"There's ageism in everything. I don't give a hoot. It isn't what other people think; it's what you think. But it's hard to come to terms with getting older. I admire people like Vivienne Westwood."

"You know, I do speak the Queens English. It's just the wrong Queens that's all. It's over the 59th Street Bridge. It's not over the Atlantic Ocean."

"Where I come from, if you see your family and friends' civil rights being taken away, you speak up and do everything you can to keep that from happening!"