"I lucked out when I started to sing. I'd already experienced failing at everything else."

"Sometimes my mind boggles. It's so deep my mind actually boggles."

"What, do you think that feminism means you hate men?"

"I don't have good business sense. You never get much money for the arts. But I like independence. I like to grow."

"The more you practice and study, the better you are... so I still practice and study all the time."

"Somebody did "complain "to me and tell me that my clothes were so loud they couldn't hear me sing."

"I've always felt, even as a songwriter, that the rhythm of speech is in itself a language for me."

"The '80s was a really creative and brave period. Remember, it was a period of ultraconservatism, and so you needed brave people to push ahead like that."

"When I sing I don't feel like it's me. I feel I am fabulous, like I'm 10 feet tall. I am the greatest. I am the strongest. I am "Samson". I'm whoever I want to be."

"My music is about a joyful experience. I've learned that if you can affect other people, you should."

"I learned jazz; that comes from blues. I learned rock; that comes from blues. I learned pop; that comes from blues. Even dance, that comes from blues, with the answer-and-response."

"It's that anonymous person who meanders through the streets and feels what's happening there, feels the pulse of the people, who's able to create."

"I can't judge the way other people behave. I can only look at myself."

"If you can't go one way, there's many ways to get where you're going. So you just take a step back and see beyond the wall."

"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!"

"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."

"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."

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

"Everything does go in a circle."

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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 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."

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

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

"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'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 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 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?"

"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 didn't have chemo."

"My mother has battled breast cancer three times."

"I am always looking for a great play and a great part to do."

"I'm a very big public school advocate."

"I'm fairly out of the loop when it comes to pop culture."

"Abortion is a hard thing for Hollywood to deal with because it is so controversial and you don't want to alienate half your audience by sending one message or the other."

"Women's health needs to be front and center - it often isn't, but it needs to be."

"The idea of making access to safe abortions harder and more expensive and more difficult, having to travel across state lines - that puts women's health and lives in jeopardy, which is something I think no one wants."

"Abortion is a right I feel must not go away, and I feel like people aren't mobilizing so much because it's so complicated and it's difficult to understand."

"The recognition factor is so much higher when I'm a redhead, so when I'm a blonde I can pass under the radar a lot more easily."

"I am not a redhead, I'm a blonde."

"I'd do a show about garbagemen if it was good!"

"I'm not adopting a baby."

"I'm so not a financial person."

"We've all seen the mom who devotes all her time and attention to her child and is so hungry for adult interaction that as soon as she's around another adult, she's not paying attention anymore."