I dropped out of NYU, moved out of my parent's house, got my own place, and survived on my own. I made music and worked my way from the bottom up.

I'm not interested, Larry, in being a perfect, plastic pop singer that looks great in bikinis and is on the cover of every magazine. I'm more interested in helping my fans to love who they are, and helping them to reject prejudice and reject those things that they're taught from society to not like themselves, to feel like freaks, that they're not wanted.

Celebrity life and media culture are probably the most overbearing pop-cultural conditions that we as young people have to deal with, because it forces us to judge ourselves.

People will always talk, so lets give them sumthin to talk about

Gaga and Stefani are my nicknames. I guess when people meet me for the first time and call me Stefani, it bothers me. Because it's something that's reserved for only the people who are closest to me. It's not because I don't like my given name; it's that I became somebody else. I became somebody else for a reason, you know. This is part of what my message is - you can become whoever you want to be, to escape your past.

More education for women. More jobs for women. More equal opportunities for women. More women to be taken seriously. And I think more than anything we wish to be heard and not to be shut down. I think this is a good thing to think about for any community; what is important is that our voices be heard and not swallowed in an abyss of history.

My fans are who I am. You give meaning to my life. You will never know the connection I feel to you.