My family knew I was gay when I was 15, long before I got famous. But it's a very different thing coming out to your family and coming out to the universe. That's a big step. Maybe without me, there wouldn't be Adam Lambert. Without Bowie, there wouldn't be me. Without Quentin Crisp, there wouldn't have been Bowie. So everything is part of a big daisy chain.

I was unwelcome in the U.S. for four years.

When you go onstage, you go on there to have a good time, and you smile and you engage with the audience and you invite them in.

I don't know whether when I was 20 years old or 25 years old if somebody would have come along with incredible wisdom whether I would have really listened.

On Madonna: She's a gay man trapped in a woman's body.

As a kid, I would've loved to get a tweet from David Bowie or Joan Rivers or Tom Cruise. It's great that you can communicate with people and it's instant.

For me the most interesting thing about Leigh Bowery was the way he used his body as a style statement. He was a big guy, but, because he was tall and had long legs, he looked in proportion - even sexy - despite being overweight by conventional standards.