In America it is not considered to be mentally ill when a woman advances on her prey in a discotheque setting with hardy cocktails present.
I'm angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.
I don't doubt love for a second. I'm living for love. Listen to my songs!
I don't affiliate myself with any specific religious group. I connect to different ritualistic aspects of different belief systems, and I see the connecting thread between all religious beliefs.
I think there probably was a time when I was less provocative. That's when I was married.
I actually always try to have a moment in my show where I can just lay down on stage and talk to people for a little while.
My father was very strict with me, and I kept seeing a disparity between their freedom and my lack of it, or how I had all the responsibilities and they had none. And the Catholic Church, all of the rules, and why did I have to wear a dress when they could wear pants? I would say to my dad: 'Will Jesus love me less if I wear pants? Am I going to hell?'
With all the chaos, pain and suffering in the world, the fact that my adoption of a child from who was living in an orphanage, you know, was the number one story for a week in the world. To me, that says more about our inability to focus on the real problems.
Before doing any interviews I like to know who I'm meeting with and get a bit of an idea of their sensibilities.
Nowadays New-York is not the exciting place it used to be. It still has great energy; I still put my finger in the socket. But it doesn't feel alive, cracking with that synergy between the art world and music world and fashion world that was happening in the 80s. A lot of people died.
There are certain mystical belief systems that believe that taking pictures takes an aspect of the soul, but beyond that it's just the idea that once you're captured in a photograph, then a million presumptions are made of you, and you are forever frozen in that one moment, and you are perceived to be the embodiment of that moment, and that, of course, is an illusion.
I like the idea of going to one of those retreats where you don't speak - like, silence for five days.
I like that you have four minutes to zero in on something and evoke a specific feeling and take people on some sort of journey.
When you make a movie, it seems like there's nothing but resistance. It's kind of a miracle that any movie ever gets made.
I'm obsessed with clowns and what they represent and the idea that clowns are supposed to make you laugh, but inevitably they're hiding something. That's how I look at my life.
I like to make people think.
My favorite scene that I ever filmed was singing "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" from the balcony of the Casa Rosada in Argentina [where the real Eva Peron once stood] during Evita. That was amazing. SO real and surreal. Bizarre.
Thinking isn't something you think about. It comes naturally. Thinking involves many things. It involves being an observer. It involves analyzing things, taking in what's around you in the world and finding how to make it inspire your work or turn it into a lesson to teach your children; it's paying attention to details. That's what thinking is: processing.
I'm liking the idea more and more of just standing up with a microphone and talking.
The ultimate moment where I most felt like a rebel was in St. Petersburg, Russia [in 2012 during the MDNA Tour] when I was told they were going to arrest anyone who was openly or obviously gay and they came to my shows and I spoke out against the government.
Donald Trump is the president. It's not a bad dream. It really happened. It's like being dumped by a lover and also being stuck in a nightmare.
I think everybody has a bisexual nature. That's my theory. I could be wrong.
That's what I mean about Catholicism - your sexual life is supposed to be dead if you're a good Catholic. That's wrong. It's human nature to be sexual, so why would God want you to deny your human nature?
Make no mistake, Madonna is always in control of the image she wants you to see.
I was working with Toby Gad, who spent a lot of time in India. There's a sitar [in "Body Shop"] and the song has a very Indian flavor to it. I liked the idea of the body of a car as a kind of sexual metaphor - What you do to a car, what you do in a car - drive. So, lots of innuendos, and lots of fun.
