“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?'”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.'”
“So there's nothing more provocative than taking a genre that everybody who's cool hates - and then making it cool.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 have to be on such a strict diet constantly.”
“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.”
“I never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one.”
“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.”
“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 just want my family to be safe. Because I am sometimes polarizing, I fear for their safety.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I do yoga, I do Bikram and I run, and I eat really healthy.”
“I'm working on bringing the instant film camera back as part of the future.”
“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.”
“Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.”
“My mom and I are very close.”
“You shouldn't have to have money to have a luxury fragrance.”
“I don't want to make money I want to make a difference.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I don't care about money.”
“When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.”
“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 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 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.”
“Pop music will never be low brow.”
“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.”
“I write music every day.”
“I don't want to make niche-oriented music.”
“I just want to keep writing music.”
“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 don't think that women need to smell interesting.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”