My former bullies pay extra to come backstage and meet me after shows, and I pretend not to know them in front of their friends. It is the most divine pleasure to exact the revenge of the brutalized child that resides within.

Try to put your happiness before anyone else's, because you may never have done so in your entire life, if you really think about it, if you are really honest with yourself.

Just because you are blind and unable to see my beauty doesn't mean it does not exist.

Privacy and security are those things you give up when you show the world what makes you extraordinary.

Its funny because when I did feel like I came out and I just felt like I was being truthful to myself, (it was at) that point I became very successful. So you know, it took a true kind of facing that truth of myself and being honest, that was when the real kind of fame or whatever that kind of stuff happened for me.

I always thought that people told you that you're beautiful-that this was a title that was bestowed upon you. [...] I think that it's time to take this power into our own hands and to say, "You know what? I'm beautiful. I just am. And that's my light. I'm just a beautiful woman."

That notion that we're in the post-racism, post-sexism world is so not true.