When I’m surfing, I’m sure not thinking about the paparazzi. I guess if they start getting on floaties and coming out there in the water, then I might be a little upset.

I don’t think you get successful to brag and throw what you have in the world’s face. That’s all private.

Before ever meeting Priyanka Chopra, I had heard her name coming out of Bollywood and was impressed: she was beautiful, talented, had made nearly 50 movies, earned multiple awards – a massive star.

The biggest guru-mantra is: never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you.

The details surrounding both my marriage and subsequent filing for divorce are private, and I had hoped to keep them that way for the sake of my family.

I’ve learned that usually, the less I know about other people, the better off I am.

People are very reluctant to talk about their private lives but then you go to the internet and they’re much more open.

Madonna and I are very different. Just saying. We’re very different. I wouldn’t make that comparison at all, and I don’t mean to disrespect Madonna: she’s a nice lady, and she’s had a fantastic, huge career – biggest pop star of all time.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

If you were to ask me what I want to do – I don’t want to be a celebrity, I want to make a difference.

I can walk through a hotel lobby and watch people at the desk and see what they’re doing. People don’t look at me. They don’t even know I’m there.

I feel only my friends and family need to know what is happening in my personal life.

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

What good is it being Marilyn Monroe? Why can’t I just be an ordinary woman?

I say to the paparazzi, ‚Fellas, take your shot and go.‘ It’s just they usually find me on a beach.

The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.

I don’t let a lot of reporters meet my children.

That is what fame is, isn’t it? To get the world to fall in love with you.

I don’t have anything to hide.

I just hope people don’t get sick of us. I’m sick of us and I’m in Destiny’s Child.

He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed.

The real question for me is, do people have the tools that they need in order to make those decisions well? And I think that it’s actually really important that Facebook continually makes it easier and easier to make those decisions… If people feel like they don’t have control over how they’re sharing things, then we’re failing them.

I do not recognize the right of the public to break in the front door of a man’s private life in order to satisfy the gaze of the curious… I do not think it right to dissect living men even for the advancement of science. So far as I am concerned, I prefer a post mortem examination to vivisection without anaesthetics.

It’s dangerous to read the Internet about yourself when you’re me. Or when you’re anyone in the public eye.

My personal feelings are my personal feelings. I don’t want to express them with anyone except for a very few people. It doesn’t do any good. It really doesn’t.

There’s always been a lot of information about your activities. Every phone number you dial, every credit-card charge you make. It’s long since passed that a typical person doesn’t leave footprints.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it’s their fault.

I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff.

The only black battalion on Iwo Jima was a small munitions supply unit that came to the beach.

The challenge for me as an actor is if you become a celebrity, you don’t meet strangers anymore. And strangers are where we have our anonymity. And I believe it’s essential for the soul to be anonymous, especially if you’re going to be an actor.

You have to be careful about how much you reveal to people that look up to you so much.

Basically what I’m trying to tell you is that it’s almost impossible to drive a jet ski at night time unless you’re in a city with lights lit up so you can navigate. Besides being pitch black, that water turn black at night. Listen, I don’t recommend it.

Becoming famous was never what I wanted to do. There’s a lot of things that come with fame – it’s what people in the limelight have to do.

Our cellar home had a kitchen and a combination bedroom and half bath, which meant we had a sink next to the bed. We had no refrigerator, no shower or tub, and no privacy. My parents shared the bedroom with my sister and me.

I get really restless when I haven’t worked for a day and a half. I have a recurring dream that people are lined up next to my bed, waiting for autographs and taking pictures of me!

I don’t want to be on the Internet.

I’ve… been accused of being involved with every man I’m ever seen with or worked with. Maybe I have, maybe I ain’t. I never tell if I have.

My apartment is my stage, and my bedroom is my stage – they’re just not stages you’re allowed to see.

You can use your real identity, or you can use phone numbers for something like WhatsApp, and pseudonyms for something like Instagram. But in any of those you’re not just sharing and consuming content, you are also building relationships with people and building an understanding of people.

I’m easy to look like, so there are lots and lots of Dolly look-alikes.

In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.

If one synchronised swimmer drowns, do all the rest have to drown too?

I wear wigs all the time on shows, and every day when I’m in public, at Dollywood. People say, ‚How many wigs do you have?‘ And I say, ‚Well, at least 365 because I wear at least one a day.‘

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

I like the city. I like the concrete. I like big business. I like being a CEO of my own company and having a lot of responsibilities. At the same time, when I can go off with a backpack or off on a surfboard or even off on a run somewhere in the woods – that’s where I’m really happy.

Getting recognized is insane. It just blows my mind. Like, someone who you don’t know at all can just be like, ‚Oh my God – are you Billie?‘

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

I do not see myself as a celebrity or an icon or things like that… I have not really done anything.

I use my celebrity status to inspire someone, to give them hope.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

It’s dangerous when people are willing to give up their privacy.

I’ve never had that much trouble with the paparazzi, but I don’t run the same circles that a lot of these people that do get hounded by the paparazzi.

There are only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little different because people are staring at you.

I am not The Rock. I am Dwayne Johnson.

I’m standing behind a wall of jokes. You don’t know about my personal life, my girlfriends, or what I do when I’m not on the road. There’s this guy, this comedian, and this is how he thinks, but people really don’t know anything about me.

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. That is what we do.

I have hobbies. I like being active. I like to surf a lot, play a little bit of golf.

I would never say I was an icon, but so many people have said I am, so I suppose I am. I mean, I can’t not be what everyone says I am. But I don’t feel like an icon.