A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.
Because the sweeter the cake, the more bitter the jelly can be.
‘Born this Way’ is about being yourself, and loving who you are and being proud.
Celebrity life and media culture are probably the most overbearing pop-cultural conditions that we as young people have to deal with, because it forces us to judge ourselves.
Don’t you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can’t be exactly who you are.
Equality cannot be reached if fought in a divisive way.
Even if the whole world turns their back on you, you’ll always have yourself.
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.
Every video I’m in, every magazine cover, they stretch you; they make you perfect. It’s not real life. Fame is ultimately about the cycles of desire and how to do away with them or manage them well. Fight and push harder for what you believe in, you’d be surprised, you are much stronger than you think. Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.
I already am a product.
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.
I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.
I am my own sanctuary and I can be reborn as many times as I choose throughout my life.
I am so excited to extend myself behind the scenes as a designer and to – as my father puts it – finally have a real job.
I believe that if you have revolutionary potential, you must make the world a better place and use it.
I consider myself to have one of the greatest voices in the industry.
I decided to pursue music, so I dropped out of school and I told my parents I didn’t want any money from them. I got three jobs and I just hit the ground running.
I do yoga, I do Bikram and I run, and I eat really healthy.
I don’t care about money.
I don’t like celebrities; I don’t hang out with them; I don’t relate to that life.
I don’t like L.A. It’s just not fun. I don’t know why, but I just don’t get it. You have to drive to get everywhere, and when it rains everybody freaks out.
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 like talking to celebrities.
I don’t see myself as ever being like anybody else.
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 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 don’t think that women need to smell interesting.
I don’t view myself as outrageous – that’s not the intention. Its to be more and more original.
I don’t want to make money; I want to make a difference.
I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.
I dropped out of NYU, moved out of my parent’s house, got my own place, and survived on my own. I made music and worked my way from the bottom up.
I feel like if you’re a really good human being, you can try to find something beautiful in every single person, no matter what.
I feel that my fans have cultivated my talent and they continue to nurture me.
I find it so important now to be a role model and a figure. And I know that may sound strange to some people, but most important is my connection with my fans and the connection that they breed with one another.
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.
I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.
I guess you could say it’s always been my destiny to be a performer.
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-cking deli without hearing or seeing me.’
I had this dream and I really wanted to be a star. I was almost a monster in the way that I was fearless with my ambitions.
I have dreamt a lifetime to get on this flight to New York. I don’t care if it’s summer. Leather, high heels, and a bad attitude. Here I come.
I have never had plastic surgery, and there are many pop singers who have.
I have to be on such a strict diet constantly.
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 hope when I’m dead I’ll be considered an icon, though.
I just am committed wholeheartedly to theatre with no intermission.
I just want my family to be safe. Because I am sometimes polarizing, I fear for their safety.
I just want to keep writing music.
I like black because it is a vacant space.
I like pushing boundaries.
I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.
I love being able to be political without any political affiliation.
I love Dolce & Gabbana. I love Versace. I love the crazy, more eccentric stuff.
I love imperfections.
I never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one.
I really wanted to break the mold of what modern touring is right now.
I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don’t live my life in the way someone like you does. I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans.
I think it’s OK to be confident in yourself.
I think tolerance and acceptance and love is something that feeds every community.
I think what it really is, is that I date creative people. And I think that what intimidates them is not my purse; it’s my mind.
I think what made it difficult for people to get, and still makes it difficult for people to get, is the theatrical nature of the work and the fact that, my music doesn’t exist without the performance-art element. I try to not focus on what people expect from me.
I want a baby from an Italian – possibly Sicilian – donor.
I want kids. I want a soccer team, and I want a husband.
I want my fans to know I’m there for them. I want them to see every part of me. I am never going to leave them. 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.
I want you to let go of all of your insecurities. I want you to reject anyone of anything that ever made you feel like you don’t belong.
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 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 was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.
I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point.
I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song ‘Radio Gaga.’
I was performing in New York and my friends started to call me Gaga, they said I was very theatrical and they said, ‘You’re Gaga’.
I was so ashamed of who I was.
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 work very hard, but when God opens that door for you – when life opens that door for you, I should say – I think it’s important to be giving, to return the love back.
I write music every day.
If you are not being bullied all I would say – cause I like to talk about the other side of it as well – is you know, be someone that nurtures, and if there’s someone in your class that maybe doesn’t have a lot of friends, be the person that sits with them in the cafeteria sometimes; be the bigger person.
If you don’t feel safe as a child, you can’t learn.
If you dont have any shadows, you’re not standing in the light.
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. I’m a wandering gypsy.
I’m an inventor.
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.
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.
I’m drawn to bad romances.
I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.
I’m not as goal obsessed as I am process obsessed.
I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.
I’m perpetually lonely.
I’m very free-spirited.
I’m working on bringing the instant film camera back as part of the future.
In a sense I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny.
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?’
In the book of Gaga, fame is in your heart, fame is there to comfort you, to bring you self-confidence and worth whenever you need it.
It sometimes makes people feel better about themselves, you know, to put other people down, or make fun of them, or maybe make mockery of their work and that doesn’t make me feel good at all.
It was my delusion and naivety that brought me here.
It’s funny when people say they see a lot of Madonna in me. I just feel so flattered because I love her and I am just her biggest fan. She is very strong. I love the way she does interviews -you know you won’t get anything past her.
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.
It’s not that I’ve been dishonest, it’s just that I loathe reality.
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.
I’ve had grand pianos that are more expensive than, like, a year’s worth of rent.
Lady Gaga is my name. If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.
Life is a red carpet.
Listen, I’ve got the sickest ambition.
Love is an interesting thing.
My apartment is my stage, and my bedroom is my stage – they’re just not stages you’re allowed to see.
My concerts are about me being very private in public, but I’m very protective.
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.
My mom and I are very close.
My mother always wanted to give back.
My next baby will be my new record.
My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.
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.
On her song, Poker Face: I do like women. I’ve only been in love with men. I’ve never been in love with a woman, but that’s really what the song is all about, why when I was with my boyfriend, was I fantasizing about women.
People want to tear me down, they were going to knife me anyway.
Pop music will never be low brow.
Pop stars should not eat.
So there’s nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who’s cool hates – and then making it cool.
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.
Sometimes I find my head spinning. Not because of alcohol, but because of my life.
Sometimes I think that there’s a fine line between impressionistic and messy.
Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer.
That I am artificial and attention-seeking, when the truth is that, every bit of me is devoted to love and art.
That is what fame is, isn’t it? To get the world to fall in love with you.
The blurring of fantasy and reality is something that the Japanese herald in their life, in their day-to-day commercialism.
The dieting wars have got to stop.
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.
The last thing a young woman needs is another picture of a sexy pop star writhing in sand, covered in grease, touching herself. My image was an issue at my record label. I fought for months and cried at meetings. I got criticized for being arrogant because if you’re sure of yourself as a woman they say you’re a bitch whereas if you’re a man and you’re strong-willed it’s normal.
Then, when I’m in these relationships with people who are also creative, or creative in their own way, what happens is the attraction is initially there and it’s all unicorns and rainbows. And then they hate me.
There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.
They can’t scare me, if I scare them first.
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.
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.
Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.
We are not actually equal – humanity – if we are not allowed to freely love one another.
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.
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.
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.
What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.
When I say to you, there is nobody like me, and there never was, that is a statement I want every woman to feel and make about themselves.
When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.
When the whole world has their eyes on you, if you say something that doesn’t truly come from your spirit and your soul, or if you wear something that doesn’t come from your spirit and your soul, it’s an injustice to your position. And so, I’m really myself every single day and I do it because I know my fans would want me to.
When you’re around me and really see that all I do is live and breathe for my work, it’s not strange, it’s just Gaga.
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.
Whether I’m wearing lots of makeup or no makeup, I’m always the same person inside.
Women need to protect themselves. You put that condom in your purse and save your own f-cking life. You have to be careful about how much you reveal to people that look up to you so much.
You shouldn’t have to have money to have a luxury fragrance.
You think I’m going to ask these sweet 14 year olds to ask their parents to buy a $100 ticket then run around in latex and lip sync? No way.
