I never grew up with a mother's hand - that's why I will forever be insecure, I think, in that primal way.

I wasn't playing a drag queen - I was playing an extraordinary performer.

I really need to be alone. I can't deal with someone sleeping next to me.

I don't want to sound pompous, but I really think your gender doesn't necessarily dominate your sexual activity.

If you come from a normal family, you immediately start playing the role of a boy, a girl a man or a woman, but I'm sure you'll agree with me that those are only roles, limited roles, at that.

The point I'm trying to make is, I'm really quite neutral. I have not been conditioned.

I have not lived so abundantly, full of family, full of continuity and history.

I didn't have parents, so I lived in people's homes... And because I grew up with no parental role models, I learned to become my own friend, eventually my own father and my own mother.

I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten - with art, but with no sense of identity.

An extraordinary diva would never sit by herself.

I know people look at me and try to make conclusions about me immediately, based on the obvious, let's say.

Not being interested in other cultures is the normal state of mankind.

Words are the most powerful thing in the universe... Words are containers. They contain faith, or fear, and they produce after their kind.

Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.

I expect to be great. I expect to do what hasn't been done. I expect to provoke change.

Throw em a bone and they want a steak.

What is the universal? The single case. What is the particular? Millions of cases.

With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it.

I was excited to explore and see the world. I'd been traveling since I was 6 months old, so I was never fearful of getting on a plane and going somewhere - even America.

Billie Holiday I never met, but I love her music.

Sometimes I'll go down a path, and I'll just pray that something's going to come to get me out of this path that I'm on.