‚I’ll be back‘ always sounded a little girly to me.

The army teaches boys to think like men.

I make pop culture.

I was a very shy character, always feeling uncomfortable because everybody was stronger than I, and always afraid I would look like a sissy. Everybody else played baseball; everybody else did all kinds of athletic things.

To conclude that women are unfitted to the task of our historic society seems to me the equivalent of closing male eyes to female facts.

There was a time Michael Jackson couldn’t get his video on MTV because he was considered to be ‚urban.‘ The Michael Jackson. So I literally have to be the Michael Jackson of apparel in order to break down the doors for everyone who will come after I’m gone, after I’m dead.

If I close my eyes and think of Hollywood, all I see is one big varicose vein.

I don’t want to just revolve. I want to evolve. As a man, as a human, as a father, as a lover.

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.

I’m tough when I have to be, tender when I should be. When you find a really tough guy, he’s not a predator. He doesn’t have to prove himself. Guys who have to pretend to be tough, they ain’t. I’m tough.

What’s with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?

I feel like I’m changing pop culture.

To kids, I’ve always been more than just some big tough black guy. I train to be tough – I box and do karate – but underneath all that toughness is a tender man.

That thing about being an icon, the fifth Beatle, I just found it so freaky.

I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.

You can say, ‚Well, isn’t it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine‘ – well, it might be unfortunate, but it doesn’t matter, because that is how it’s represented. It’s been represented like that forever. And there are reasons for it. You can’t change it. It’s not possible. This is underneath everything.

Celebrity is ridiculous and silly and it’s mad that people like me are listened to – you know, rap stars and movie stars.

Come on, you can’t name a truck after a chick.

Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.

Nicki Minaj, will you marry me?

My goal is just to be respected as a man when I walk down the street with my family. I don’t care what your job is, you’re not gonna talk down to me, you’re not gonna try to get a rise out of me. I’m a man first. And in establishing that, some interesting things have happened.

Women’s liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It’s men who are discriminated against. They can’t bear children. And no one is likely to do anything about that.

I’m so not macho. It’s crazy. My man cave is so not a man cave.

When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

I’ve always had a problem with the average macho man – they’ve always been a threat to me.

The English don’t like concepts, really, not from a pop star. It’s alright if they come from an ‚intellectual,‘, but from a pop star you’re getting ahead of yourself. Part of the class game is that you shouldn’t rise above your station, and to start talking about concepts if you’re in the pop world is getting a bit uppity, isn’t it?

I’m always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they’re going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It’s just a given law.

Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn’t women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?

Reggaeton is something else – it is part of pop culture. It is something very big that I don’t believe will ever die.

Men walk this tightrope where any sign of weakness illicits shame, and so they’re afraid to make themselves vulnerable for fear of looking weak.

I know about two things: ‚Rocky III‘ and Clubber Lang, and ‚A-Team‘ and B.A. Baracus. That’s who I am!

I view myself as being the average woman. While I am first lady, I wasn’t first lady my whole life. I’m a product of pop culture. I’m a consumer of pop culture, and I know what resonates with people.

I stopped watching TV because of ‚The Wire.‘ Like, ‚The Wire‘ ruined everything for me because I don’t even want to watch anything else now.

I think any man who lets a woman pick what he should wear… I mean, you gotta draw the line somewhere as a man. I see these guys, ‚My wife told me to wear this!‘ And I just shake my head.

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.

A gender line… helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

It is not possible for a man to be elegant without a touch of femininity.

I truly believe that women should be financially independent from their men. And let’s face it, money gives men the power to run the show. It gives men the power to define value. They define what’s sexy. And men define what’s feminine. It’s ridiculous.

Whether women are better than men I cannot say – but I can say they are certainly no worse.

Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.

I really don’t like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they’re horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They’d better sort themselves out and become more womanly.

Pop is totally results-oriented and there is a very strong feedback loop.

There are other measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.

Robyn is who I am. Rihanna – that’s an idea of who I am.

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.

I am a tough guy.

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

Men who think that a woman’s past love affairs lessen her love for them are usually stupid and weak.

I don’t watch it, but I know enough to comment on it.

But I did ‚Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.‘ They made a cereal out of it, so once you’ve had a cereal, it doesn’t get much more surreal than that. Surreal cereal.

If you’re embarrassed because you have some notion about how men are supposed to behave, and it doesn’t include weeping, then you have some personal work to do.

It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly.

The masculine spirit is under assault. It’s obvious.

I really like Lady GaGa and everything she is for her fans.

You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

I’m a geek.

I definitely feel closer to the feminine side of the human being than I do the male – or the American idea of what a male is supposed to be. Just watch a beer commercial and you’ll see what I mean.

I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘