Citations

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.

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

You can laugh when I talk, but not when I sing. People used to throw rocks at me for my clothes... now they wanna know where I buy them.

On being a feminist: I'm a bra-burner from way back!

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

You can't stamp out individuality - there's too many of us.

(on her album "At Last") It was an idea to do a special project. because people would come see me live and go, "Gee, I didn't know she could sing." And I'd be like, "Yeah, you ever tried to sing 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun', pal?".

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.

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?".

My mother said I was a little odd as a kid. I was alone a lot, but I didn't feel alone. When I sang with those records, I'd be Julie Andrews and there was Rex Harrison sitting on my mother's bed. I was Mitzi Gaynor. I was Ezio Pinza. I think she had Mary Martin too - I was all of them. I was pretty good until they sang duets.

[on the music video "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"] It was very important to me that every girl was represented - Hispanic girls, African-American girls. I told Edd (Griles - the video director) that we had to have multiracial people too. At that time, everybody who was in videos was either all white or all black. I figured, "You know what? Here's what I see missing. Let's go for it." There still wasn't as much integration as there should have been, but I feel like a lot of little girls who saw the video saw themselves, and that was the most important thing.

I don't think it served our purpose because anger is not better than clarity and humanity. [On Madonna's profanity-laced speech in the Women's March.]