When I'm dead and no longer the threat. My comfort is that all the great artists since the beginning of time have always been completely misunderstood and never fully appreciated until they were dead.

I was never appalled by myself. I felt a little bit uneasy about certain things. But honestly I've learned to love myself and to see that in the midst of all my ambition and desire to succeed and my search for approval, I do give things to people. I bring some sort of happiness to their lives. So I'm not so hard on myself anymore.

George [Michael], I want your sex, so be my father figure and I will have faith if we have to live hand-to-mouth. The diva himself.

I keep telling everyone that I want to start a revolution but no one is taking me seriously. If I had black skin and an afro, would you take me seriously? If I was an Arab waving a hand grenade, would you take me seriously?

Ever since my daughter was born I feel the fleetingness of time. And I don't want to waste it on getting the perfect lip color.

Trying to be a professional dancer, paying my rent by posing nude for art classes, staring at people staring at me naked. Daring them to think of me as anything but a form they were trying to capture with their pencils and charcoal. I was defiant. Hell-bent on surviving. On making it. But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare myself every day to keep going.

The only way I've been able to survive the betrayal of lovers, family members, and society is to be able to create as an artist.