What I wear on and off stage is my mask. You see, a mask doesn't hide you, it exposes you.

All my images are self-portraits, even when I'm not in them.

Pop is about speaking everybody's language. The imagery and iconography we instantly recognize. When you can rely on things that the public already knows, you're dealing with Pop.

Sometimes people are shocked by what I do, but I'm not trying to be liked, I speak my mind and I don't care what people think. I truly do not compromise on who I am.

I'm like a circus standing on two legs.

I love the idea of reincarnation, so just in case it doesn't exist, I decided to be different people in the same lifetime.

I'm a Baroque person. More than Baroque, I'm a Rococo person. I don't draw straight lines.

For me, every week is a fashion week.

My childhood was a drag show!

France, stop throwing awards at me! I have so many already, give them to people who need them.

A red nose is the clown's mask and my moustache is mine.

A child's giggle is worth one hundred pounds of gold.

There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man's heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned.

When I was a worker I busied myself with socialist or, if you like, marxist literature.

Let's give it up for the Secret Service. I don't want to be too hard on those guys. You know, because they're the only law enforcement agency that will get in trouble if a black man gets shot.

Education helps you earn more. But not many schoolteachers can prove it.

I want to get rid of Common Core.

The glorious Dryden, refiner and purifier of English verse, did less for rhyme than he did for metre.

At first it upset me to realize how many people are, at heart, selfish. Now I take that in stride, but people's loneliness still gets to me.

You looked at me, your eyes huge. You we're like a dog then, waiting for me to throw you a bone . . . waiting for something I could never give you.