Identity Quotes

You're born with the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.

I'm a '60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows. I'm in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion.

As a performer I've played for 50,000 people and I've played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

My identity shifted when I got into recovery. That's who I am now, and it actually gives me greater pleasure to have that identity than to be a musician or anything else, because it keeps me in a manageable size. When I'm down on the ground with my disease-which I'm happy to have-it gets me in tune. It gives me a spiritual anchor. Don't ask me to explain.

I had no idea how to do that, because I was either above or below everybody. I was either towering above as Clapton the guitar virtuoso, or cringing on the floor, because if you took away my guitar and my musical career, then I was nothing.

I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.

I'm not one icon. I'm every icon. I'm an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time.

Lady Gaga is my name. If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don't really know me at all.

My fashion is part of who I am, and though I was not born with these clothes on, I was born this way.

Gaga and Stefani are my nicknames. I guess when people meet me for the first time and call me Stefani, it bothers me. Because it's something that's reserved for only the people who are closest to me. It's not because I don't like my given name; it's that I became somebody else. I became somebody else for a reason, you know. This is part of what my message is - you can become whoever you want to be, to escape your past.

The way that I sing, what I sing about, what I wear, who I am, this is me. I was born this way.

I don't see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way - artistically.

In a sense I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny.

I am the excuse to explore your identity. To be exactly who you are and to feel unafraid. To not judge yourself, to not hate yourself.

My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.

Don't make your career be your life. Let it be your passion. Let it bring you pleasure. But don't let it become your identity. You are so much more valuable than that.

The craziest thing I've done is cut my hair blonde and short a couple of years ago. And people reached out to me saying, 'Celine, you're one of the most stable things we have in our lives, don't do that. We want you the way you are.'

I was performing in New York and my friends started to call me Gaga. They said I was very theatrical... So they said, you're Gaga.

If you're trying too hard to be the girl next door, you're not going to be.