I lucked out when I started to sing. I'd already experienced failing at everything else.

When I sing I don't feel like it's me. I feel I am fabulous, like I'm 10 feet tall. I am the greatest. I am the strongest. I am Samson. I'm whoever I want to be.

Dick Clark was a really great influence in my career; he helped me a lot with his whole organization, and they were awesome to me at all different points - but one thing that I really disagreed with him on was when he said that what I do, pop music, is a disposable art form.

You always have to remember - no matter what you're told - that God loves all the flowers, even the wild ones that grow on the side of the highway.

I come from a line of great Sicilian women, and their mentality is to endure and push through to the other side.

I always sang. I wanted to be in a band with my sister, and I was, at 11. At 12, I started writing seriously, and that was my pacifier all through high school - that and painting.

I have a wig for when I go outside among the regular folks, so they don't feel uncomfortable because I have a Day-Glo color somewhere in my hair.