I say, ‚Yeah, Taylor Swift.‘ I think she is a smart, beautiful girl. I think she’s making all the right moves. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s surrounded with wonderful people. Her songs are great. She keeps herself anchored. She knows who she is, and she’s living and standing by that.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

I sing and play the guitar, and I’m a walking, talking bacterial infection.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Remember, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I’m not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent – just like there’s a side of me that’s vulgar and violent.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

I don’t worry about stress. I create it.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

You know, my family and friends have never been yes-men: ‚Yes, you’re doing the right thing, you’re always right.‘ No, they tell me when I’m wrong, and that’s why I’ve been able to stay who I am and stay humble.

Environment is very important to me. Sometimes I have to perform during the day for festivals, and my music does not work in the daytime. It is nighttime music.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one’s self.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want. I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child. I feel quite independent of anyone.

A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.

If we are to be happy, we must first react against our tendency to follow the line of least resistance, a tendency that causes us either to remain as we are, or to look primarily to activities external to ourselves for what will provide new impetus to our lives.

Key is never be afraid of being yourself. Never!

Only the really plain people know about love – the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they soon exhaust their talents.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives… inside ourselves.

I’ve noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it’s various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

I’ve never been to New Zealand before. But one of my role models, Xena, the warrior princess, comes from there.

Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing – no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

The truth is that you can only come to know God when you give up the past and the future in your mind and merge totally into the now, because God is always here now.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

The sexiest thing that a woman can do, wear, and say all fall under one word to me: subtlety. To be subtle in the things that she does and the things she says and the things she wears – I appreciate the details.

One thing I hope I’ll never be is drunk with my own power. And anybody who says I am will never work in this town again.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

It’s very hard to live with yourself if you don’t stick with your moral code.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

Because you have things like ‚American Idol‘ and you’ve got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it’s easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.

You always want your people to be proud of what you have accomplished.

Lady Gaga is my name. If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection – you cannot cope with the future.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

I grew up listening to the Police, I grew up performing in bars, singing Police songs.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

The bird is powered by its own life and by its motivation.

Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.

The music we do is for people to enjoy, dance and sing to it. Dreamers – keep on dreaming and keep working hard to achieve your goals. There are many difficulties, but what matters is to stay focused and have perseverance.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

I was born with a great gift, and sometimes with that comes a destructive streak.

My dad seemed comfortable with his decision to be a ‚have-not,‘ but I knew that I wasn’t.

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.

I thank God I’m in a position where I can pick and choose – there are some roles I don’t play.

It’s easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.

Even if my songs are quite sad or quite dark, I don’t want my songs to make people sad. It’s very important for me that all my songs have some kind of hope or light.

One of my most popular songs, ‚Satellites,‘ I paid $300 for that beat on SoundClick.

So there’s no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn’t necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn’t necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.