I've never responded well to entrenched negative thinking.

However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn't always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it's the recording or the performance side.

People are always throwing things at me that I've said and I say that I didn't mean anything.

Everywhere I looked, demons of the future [were] on the battlegrounds of one’s emotional plane.

It would be my guess that Madonna is not a very happy woman. From my own experience, having gone through persona changes like that, that kind of clawing need to be the center of attention is not a pleasant place to be.