"I was very depressed when I was 19... I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me."

"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 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.'"

"I had this dream, and I really wanted to be a star. And I was almost a monster in the way that I was really fearless with my ambitions."

"I haven't any sort of plans for the future but I reckon things will work out in some manner."

"They all matter to me, whether I'm working on a Sam Jackson film for a week or I'm the star of my own TV series - I take it all very seriously, and I have a healthy respect for the work in general, despite the role."

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

"Right now, my job is that I'm like an ambulance chaser. I've got to look for movies with white guys falling out of them."