Madonna: Want

“To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. To just give. That takes courage, because we don't want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt.”

“I want to be like Gandhi and Martin Luther King and John Lennon but i want to STAY ALIVE.”

“I've been popular and unpopular successful and unsuccessful loved and loathed and I know how meaningless it all is. Therefore I feel free to take whatever risks I want.”

“It's not easy having a good marriage--but I don't want easy. Easy doesn't make you grow. Easy doesn't make you think. I thank God everyday that I am married to a man who makes me think. That's my definition of true love.”

“We learn our lessons; we get hurt; we want revenge. Then we realize that actually, happiness and forgiving people is the best revenge.”

“I am because we are. We all bleed the same color. We all want to love and be loved.”

“I went to New York. I had a dream. I wanted to be a big star. I didn’t know anybody. I wanted to dance. I wanted to sing. I wanted to do all those things. I wanted to make people happy. 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.”

“Madonna: "Listen, all you do is talk about my sex life on your show, so now you don't want to talk about my sex life when I'm on your show?!"”

“I've always been kind of obsessed with Frida Kahlo, so I was really into the idea of getting something that belonged to her. And then from Frida Kahlo I found out about Tina Modotti and then I started collecting her stuff and Edward Weston, and one person always leads to another person with me, because for me it started with Diego Rivera, then it went to Frida Kahlo, then it went to Tina, and Edward and… Also, if you're into Picasso, and you want to find out about him and that whole area of art and European culture, then you start reading about Man Ray and the surrealists and Andre Breton, and all of a sudden you're in that whole world and you start having interests in other people. It's like a disease.”

“Fame is a by-product. Fame is something that should happen because you do work that speaks to people and people want to know about your work. Unfortunately the personality of people has taken over from the work and the artistry and it's this thing now that stands on its own. I don't think one should ever aspire to being famous.”

“One must dare to show what he wants. You have to go and ask for things rather than wait for them to happen.”

“I wanted to be a boy when I was growing up because I was in love with all of the male dancers I knew and they were all gay. And I thought, Well, if I was a boy, they'd love me. So I got into role-playing then. That's where it began. I remember when I was still in high school, I had cut my hair off really short, and I was totally anorexic - I had no boobs - and I would dress like a boy and go to gay clubs and my goal was to trick men into thinking I was a boy.”

“Letterman: "I want to thank you folks for coming out for this run-through show. Thank you very much. This, of course, will never see the light of day. You won't miss a thing tonight."”

“I liked my body growing up and I wasn't ashamed of it. I liked boys and didn't feel inhibited by them. Maybe it comes from having brothers and sharing a bathroom. The boys got the wrong impression of me at high school. They mistook forwardness for promiscuity. When they don't get what they want, they turn on you. I went through this period when all the girls thought I was loose and the boys said I was a nymphomaniac. The first boy I ever slept with was my boyfriend and we'd been going out a long time.”

“I'm tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.”