Quotes By Madonna

I want the good life, but I don't want an easy ride. What I want is to work for it, feel the blood and sweat on my fingertips.

To me, the most important thing - aside from meeting people's physical needs, whether that's education, health care, clothing, food, a roof over their heads - is changing the mind-set and educating people. And most of all, most important, is empowering people and making them self-sustaining.

There is a very modest side to me too. How far away from me is the image? It's about 20 steps away.

Only the one that hurts you can make you feel better. Only the one that inflicts pain can take it away.

I wanted to be famous, I wanted everybody to love me. I wanted to be a star. I worked really hard, and my dream came true.

When I first moved to New York I wanted to be a dancer, I danced professionally for years, living a hand-to-mouth existence.

One thing I've learned is that I'm not the owner of my talent; I'm the manager of it.

I know the aspect of my personality, being the vixen, the heartbreaker and the incredibly provocative girl is a very marketable image, but it's not insincere. You just can't take it seriously.

Losing my virginity was a career move.

We've made so many advances in other areas - civil rights, gay rights - but ageism is still an area that's taboo and not talked about and dealt with.

I think I had a lot of bad hair moments. In the early 80's just sometimes I wore purple lipstick or green lipstick.

It would be so helpful for the straight community to see men in powerful positions coming out and saying "I'm gay" so they don't have these preconceived notions that all gay men are smarmy idiots living on the street or whatever it is people think of gay men. I think it would be really helpful and productive.

Part of the reason I sort of shot out like a cannon out of Michigan and left home at such an early age is because I had to feel independent.

Being blond is definitely a different state of mind. I can't really put my finger on it, but the artifice of being blond has some incredible sort of sexual connotation.

I am attracted to a thug. I like that quality, but I like the other side of it, too. Because all guys who go around behaving in macho ways are really scared little girls. So you have to look beneath the surface. There's a difference between my ideal man and a man that I'm sexually attracted to, believe me. Therein lies the rub.

I'll rest when I'm dead. I'm hungry and life is short!

Suffering is a big informer, a big catalyst for creation. You take your sadness, your despair, your sense of injustice, and you put it in your work.

Things were a lot simpler in Detroit. I didn't care about anything but boyfriends.

I'm constantly in conflict with things. And it is because of my past and my upbringing and the journey that I've been on.

I don't like guys my age because they are normally either married or divorced and grumpy, fat and balding.