1. Humour is a great vehicle for getting a message across. If you get too serious, you could die of starch. 2. What, do you think that feminism means you hate men?
3. 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.
4. I've got a Grammy and Emmy, I'd like to have a Tony.
5. God has more important things to worry about than who I sleep with.
6. I'm in the business where you get the business all the time.
8. Sometimes my mind boggles. It's so deep my mind actually boggles.
9. When I got hoarse, the manager would say: "Drink this. Joplin used to drink this," and I used to say: "Joplin? Joplin's dead".
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. But on a more frivolous note, makeup is important to me. I have a suitcase full of the stuff. I am just sorry I have one face to put it all on. If you saw me without makeup you wouldn’t recognize me. Thank god.
15. The women back (in the 80s) had beautiful cheekbones, thick eyebrows, big smiles - you know, everything I didn’t. I was upset that I didn’t look like them, but I find people that have a fat face like me figure how to work with it. You can do a lot with a plain, blank face.
16. The women in my neighborhood in Ozone Park, Queens, who used to emulate all the movie stars of that time. They didn’t call it a salon in those days - they called it the beauty parlor - and they used to come out after a full day with hair and makeup so bright that no drag queen could compete.
18. People used to throw rocks at me for my clothes...now they wanna know where I buy them.
19. I stopped coloring it for a while and just use tint now, but I have to say I am tired of being bland. I have a wig for when I go outside among the regular folks, so they don’t feel uncomfortable because I have a Day-Glo color somewhere in my hair. I can look normal but for everyday, for when I look in my mirror, I gotta feel better. The conservative look is killing me.
21. (on being asked if there's anyone who "just doesn't get it") Well, besides the obvious idiots that are running our country, I would say one of the women who’s been sewing my costumes lately. I'm in shape, but I'm not Kate Moss. It's like, please girl! Try singing without breathing.
23. The saddest thing for me was the passing of Alexander McQueen, because his last collection was really genius. It was art. And I love wearing art. When art and fashion mix, it’s awesome.
24. I would like to see corporations not buy out wonderful designers and then push the wonderful designers out, because the clothes are never the same and not as good. And the fake holes in jeans have to go. We can do our own.
26. In the beginning, it was just war paint and more Native American looks and basically anything to flip society the bird. You don’t like it, well, wait, let me put on something else that’s really going to tweak you. Then in 1985-86 I was looking at a lot of old Hollywood glamour books and so I started to incorporate old Hollywood glamour with what I was doing.
28. I hate that expression. ("The Gays") Like they are not quite real people.
29. I've never been big on the icon thing. I was on a tour bus once with 12 drag queens and one transgender woman-who was a guy and then became a woman. She told me that, in the end, she thought she was just more into an alternative lifestyle.
31. You can't stamp out individuality - there's too many of us.
33. You're never the only person going through what it is that you're going through.
34. It's very hard to want to be successful, and want to do something great too. Because sometimes - and not all the time - being successful and doing something really powerful don't meet.
35. I absolutely refuse to reveal my age. What am I - a car?
37. Declyn (Lauper's son) is a funny kid. He's just free. He has his own thing going on, whoever he is, and the only thing I can do as a parent is help him survive in the world as who he is. I just want him to be happy and healthy and wise. You can't make your child into yourself. So we'll see who he turns out to be.
39. Because every time you get on a dancefloor, you’re dancing with somebody, but you’re also dancing with the singer. And who’s the singer? So as I’m writing I’m thinking, who is this girl? Well, she’s in her apartment, she’s getting ready to go out, she’s working class, and she’s English. So suddenly it’s my English period. (on writing her most recent album)
41. When I first started, there was this guy who was really powerful in this business. He told me, we're making disposable art. And I thought to myself, whoa. Maybe that's what you're making, but that's not what I'm making. So I have tried to just continue my work, and not make it disposable. But it was a good thing he told me that, because then it made me concentrate even more on what I was doing, and why I was doing it.
43. The problem (with the music industry) is the negativity. And it’s being perpetuated by people who are in business who don’t live it, who are feeding off of the anger that you feel when you’re coming through puberty.
44. Understand that revolution isn't really by force, revolution is by thought!
46. Money changes everything.
47. That was so pretentious. (on "We Are the World")
48. I hope God is a drag queen, so we have a lot to discuss about fashion, makeup and cleavage.
50. When you take a group of people and you repress them and they cut themselves off from their feelings as a human - and a human being has sexual feelings, has bodily feelings - what you are handing over to children is a monster. Because if you are not connected to who you are in your heart, and you don't understand and have compassion for yourself, how in the wide world of sports are you gonna have compassion with forty screaming children?
52. 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.
53. There's no sex like safe sex.
54. Well, how do you say this in a positive way? I think what’s happening is a little sad. (Britney Spears) is a seventeen year old girl whose mom helped her get a boob job, because she felt that’s how she’d become more popular. And what’s sad is, that did help her. Yeah, I used to have fantasies. Yeah, I used to chase after the Monkees. But Christina Aguilera, who is all of nineteen, an old lady now compared to the standard. You don’t have to be some little tart. And you know what? It’s great coming to the power of your sexuality. No one wants to take that away. But why the adults have to stick their hands in and muck about, I find very sad.
56. As the audiences got larger, the participation got larger. And I found myself in Dallas, and 20,000 people were singing "Madonna Whore" back at me. I thought ... this is really a great thing. They wanted to hear it really badly, and here they are.
57. Hey, I read comics!
59. I used to get spanked. Yeah, my mother used to line us up and we'd get it with the belt. I think she was into music, cause we were all different sizes like a xylophone. But I've been through therapy, I'm OK now.
61. Yes. It's all his fault. I was nice, very pure, never did anything wrong, and then he started in and started corrupting me.
62. I'm a bra-burner from way back! (on being a feminist)
64. There have been great things that happened to me. If they didn't happen to me, I wouldn't be here. Everything was supposed to happen to me. I wouldn't have the sight that I have, I wouldn't have the creative moments that I have, I wouldn't be able to articulate what I need to articulate. I wouldn't have my son. I wouldn't have my husband. I'm a lucky woman. Everything. Every single thing. There are no mistakes.
65. When "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" came out, I was thirty. They were saying: "How old are you?" And even then I was like: "Why? You think I'm a car? You need to check under the hood and kick the tires?"
What do you think of Cyndi Lauper's quotes?
